17 The Hammer Falls
by Thescarredman
Summary: The Gens take the fight to IO. Serious butt-kicking ensues.
1. Drawing Swords

Tuesday April 4 2006  
Escondido

John Lynch was a man with problems. He was being hunted by powerful, ruthless people who were somewhat less than sane. His weird psychic powers were a burden on his mind, and made him sometimes suspect his own sanity. He shared his house with five teenagers who were the foci of forces beyond all ken, and could conceivably end the world as he knew it. He had a growing responsibility to hundreds of people, from the ninety Gens he'd released into the wild to the worldwide organization of associates he used to foil his former employers. But the issue occupying his thoughts since yesterday afternoon was something rather more mundane and immediate.

He was wondering if his wife was falling for his best friend.

She'd insisted on going to meet Colby in Boulder alone. "I don't want you within a hundred miles of IO headquarters," she'd said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his nose. She'd promised to call, and she had, as soon as she'd arrived in Boulder on Sunday afternoon. But her next call had been late Monday morning, and her conversation was clipped and uninformative, very unlike her.

He'd found himself going through her wardrobe. He'd cursed himself for being a jealous teenager, even as he'd noted the absence of a very slinky cocktail dress and some of her most provocative underthings.

He'd forced himself to take a mental step back. He didn't own her, had never even told her he loved her. He didn't have a clue what she saw in him, or how long the attraction would hold. He didn't even understand how she could feel love, with no glands or instincts to shape her feelings. Anna was a force beyond understanding.

But then, he thought, what man ever understood women?

Her unannounced return last evening, with no luggage and in strange clothes, had set off his alarms. So had her greeting: she'd practically pushed him into the bedroom and torn his clothes off. Anna was ever a willing partner, and comfortable in an aggressor's role, but there'd been a desperation to her behavior that had made him think she was seeking some sort of reassurance or affirmation from him.

Afterwards, lying in his arms, she'd told him about the raid on the meeting, and her escape and flight over the mountains, much of it on foot. She'd told him Colby's parting words. But she hadn't told him about the meeting itself, or what she'd learned. She'd told him it had been broken up too soon for any substantive exchange. His unease had almost subsided when, as she nested her head into his neck, she'd said, "Did you ever notice how much he resembles Bobby?"

He stood in the kitchen, looking at the secure phone and the card with Colby's number. Colby's "couple of days" wasn't quite up yet, but Lynch, ever a man to face problems squarely, decided it had been long enough.

-0-

"So that's it?" Caitlin met Sarah's and Anna's eyes without expression. She'd listened without visible reaction while Anna had told her about Roxanne's real father, while Sarah swallowed and wished she had Anna's senses, looking for a clue what was going on in the big redhead's mind.

"That's it, hon. I can't tell you how her mom made the mistake, or if it was a deliberate subterfuge, but her father is Sarah's dad, not yours."

"Another of God's little jokes." She scoffed, looking at the floor. "I was _so_ insistent about knowing Sarah's true parentage, wasn't I?" She looked up, and Sarah was transfixed by her emerald eyes. "So now I'm supposed to shrug and just, sort of, hand her over, is that it? Like a father giving his daughter away at the altar?"

Sarah's heart sank. _Another wedge driven between us. Caitlin…_

"My father's brother raised me, you remember. He had a daughter two years older than me. Our only physical connection is a grandfather we never met. There wasn't much resemblance even before the change. We were just kids, and almost strangers. But she shared her room with me from kindergarten until we went to college, without the slightest hint I didn't belong there. She shared her parents the same way. We borrowed each other's clothes and books and makeup. We put each other to sleep at night, talking about the craziest things. She pestered me about boys, and I nagged her about schoolwork. We fought over stupid stuff, and backed each other up on everything that mattered. Karen was my sister, in every way except the one that matters to stockbreeders. Still is, even if I never see her again."

Sarah held her breath, certain of Caitlin's next words, but afraid of her conclusions.

"I got closer than friends with Roxy before we ever compared birth certificates. And how I feel about her isn't going to change because of a name on a piece of paper." Caitlin looked from one to the other. "The way I see it, we're all sisters now."

Sarah let out a tiny puff of air, still holding most of it in. "You mean it? It's okay?"

"Sarah, it's better than okay. It's a gift."

Anna's eyes shone. "If ever there was a time for a group hug…"

A few moments later, Caitlin said, "Does she know?"

"Just us three," Anna said. "I thought we could sort of put our heads together on how to proceed."

"Roxy next," Caitlin said without hesitation. "Then the guys all together. No problem. The only one it may matter to is Eddie."

"I wonder," Anna shrugged her head. "I don't know why, but I think it will mean something to Jack. After all, he knew both men."

"But it won't change the way he looks at Roxy. That's what I was getting at."

"Hey, Mom?" Bobby stuck his head into the room. "Dad's on the phone with that guy Frank. He wants you to listen in."

-0-

Colby took a swallow of water from his glass. "I won't say it was easy," he said into the phone. "She's very suspicious. I'm sure I'm not in the clear yet. But she conditionally bought into my story that I was investigating your little friend." He took another sip, trying not to show Ivana how desperate he'd been for a drink. He had to hold the glass with both hands, since they were cuffed together.

From the nearby console, Ruche nodded to her.

"_Just glad to hear you're okay. This one was too close. I think we'd better review our contact arrangements. In fact, maybe we'd better not see each other again. I appreciate all your help-"_

"No. We've got unfinished business." He added deliberately, "She told me about the others, Jack."

A pause. "_Oh?_"

"Yes. If they start a war with IO, your kids will get caught. If you know anybody in a Genactive guerilla movement, Jack, you need to talk to them. If you bring me along, you can show you've got inside contacts and know what you're talking about."

"_Frank, she didn't tell you about Regional Command._"

His heart leaped. "No. But I had an idea. If you can take me to them, I can help."

Ruche looked up again and twitched his eyebrows.

_They think I'm lying about being willing to help, but I'm really just lying about being able to. _"Everything's under control at this end, Jack. But it'll all fall apart if our people start dying at the hands of Twelve-fives in public massacres. Arrange a meet. Let's talk to them together."

_Agree, Top. Then take my warning, hang up the phone, and never call again._

-0-

"I'll get right back to you." Lynch shut off the speaker and folded the phone gently, with six pairs of eyes on him. "They've got him. He's warning me off."

His son frowned. "It sounded like he wanted to see you right away."

Anna's eyes were round. "He _never_ calls you 'Jack.' They were at his elbow."

He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. If I stand him up, they'll kill him." He turned to leave the kitchen.

"Not by yourself." Bobby's voice. Caitlin and Roxanne closed their mouths and nodded. Eddie put an arm around Roxanne's waist; Bobby, around Sarah's.

For once, his wife kept her hands to herself. "What do we need to do, Jack?"

He inhaled deeply as he looked them over. They waited: patient, ready, unafraid. "I've been keeping you away from these people for years."

"You were protecting children." Caitlin's arm circled Anna's waist. "Mr. Lynch, you've been calling us a team since we came with you. We're saying, it's time to be a team."

"Yeah, Dad. Share the load."

"Forget _that_," Roxy said from Eddie's shoulder. "Time you quit hogging all the fun."

"Jack." Anna looked up at him earnestly. "This is a perfect opportunity to win back our freedom. But we need the kids to make it work. They can do it."

"I don't care if they can catch bullets in their teeth. They're no better organized than a Little League team. They'll get in each others' way, drop out of contact. Even if they don't simply ignore orders, they'll get caught up and forget the plan."

"Darling." Anna left Caitlin's arm to reach for him. "That's what we'll use _you_ for. To make sure that doesn't happen." She looked at him squarely. "Plan the op. Use the assets you've got. You have everything you need, if you'll use it."

"Word. You got a freakin _army_." Eddie gave Roxanne a quick squeeze for emphasis.

He felt the chill from Colby's call melt away. He put both arms around his girl, and imagined steel under the skin; then he looked at the others, and did the same. "An army. Sure enough, I do. A half-trained, undisciplined, bumping-into-each-other-like-billiard-balls-at-the-break army." The kids' smiles faded, until he said, "We are going to make them rue the day. They're going to make us their campfire story, the one they scare the new recruits with."

"_Yes!_" Anna bounced in his arms. "We're going to kick ass!"

He grinned as the others laughed. Then he let go of her to address them. "All right. We keep the plan simple, especially on the ground, to compensate for your lack of unit training. We'll go in as a raiding party, a loose formation of supporting pairs. By twos, that is. But _no_ couples." He gave a stern look to the four still holding waists. "I'm sure your discipline's not up to the test. Not this time, anyway." His awareness of them receded a bit as he planned. "We'll need speed, and surprise, even though they're waiting for us, no doubt with a few surprises of their own." He nodded to himself. "If we could just lead off with an airstrike, and come in close behind. Or an artillery barrage."

"Uh, lost us, Dad."

"Up till now, all our scraps with IO have been up close and personal, small unit stuff. This time, we'll be making a frontal assault against a prepared position. We need a standoff weapon. Some way to engage them at a distance without risk."

"I can throw stuff," Kat said. "From a distance, though, I can't be sure of my accuracy."

"Thanks, Caitlin, but that's not what we're looking for. We have to hit them everywhere at once for the proper effect. Something that'll reduce their defenses, play Hob with their command-and-control, demoralize them. Make their strong place feel like a trap."

"Bad storms scare the crap out of me." Roxanne glanced at Sarah, drawing the others' eyes to the dark-haired girl on Bobby's arm.

Eddie grinned. "What do you say, Sarah? O Spirit of Nature? I know you made it rain before. Can you whip up a _real_ storm?"

She looked at him like a hawk from its perch. "'Whip up a storm.' Eddie, a storm isn't something you 'whip up,' like a cake. Have you ever looked at storm patterns on TV? They're _miles_ across, _tons_ of air and water vapor. You see clouds, wind, high and low pressure zones. Water vapor rising off the sea and coming down as rain. It's all thermal energy, nuke-bomb amounts of it. Making a storm... creating a few kilovolts of electrical potential across an air gap is a _card trick_ by comparison."

The boy's face fell. "Sorry. I really thought. I was sure you could call a storm that'd make em scared to come out of their holes." He shrugged. "Well…"

"Oh, I didn't say I couldn't do it; I just need _time_." She turned to Lynch. "Please. Just tell me we've got a few hours, at least."

He looked at Anna, then nodded. "The rest of us need time to prepare, too." He flipped the phone open, and watched them while he connected. "All right, Frank. You've got your meet. Since you're the closest watched, you pick the place. I just hope it's better than the last one."

"_Guaranteed. Tell Anna we should have stuck with the mine shafts._" Colby gave an address in Chula Vista, a suburb in the foothills bounding the metro area's far southeast quarter about two miles from the Mexican border. Lynch guessed it would be an industrial section, rather than a residential one, and as secluded as IO could manage. "_Midnight okay?_"

He looked at his wife, who shook her head urgently and wiggled her fingers, indicating twenty-four hours. "Too soon. It's going to take some time to set this up at the other end. And, all things considered, I'd be a little uncomfortable going in alone. I'd like to bring a couple of friends."

A deliberate pause. "_Sure. The more the merrier. Bringing your little girlfriend, Jack?_"

He tried to sound amused as he replied, "Frank, you couldn't handle her. Keep your head down, and I'll see you at midnight tomorrow." He hung up the phone. "We need something small and violent, like a tornado. And carefully aimed; I don't want to see a lot of innocent bystanders hurt or homeless. What can you give us in twenty-four hours, Sarah?"

"We're going in at noon? Not midnight?"

"I'm sure they're there already, setting up," he said. "I'm betting Colby will be there by noon. Can you do a tornado in time?"

"I don't think it should be a tornado. I'm sure I could generate one, but they're skittish and hard to control." Her eyes got sleepy-looking. "But… I have an idea. I think I can create a package of violent weather and confine the destruction to a few city blocks. Will that do?"

"Perfect. I'm sure IO will keep witnesses at least that far away. What have you got in mind?"

"Something unusual. IO won't have any doubt it's our work."

"In this case, that's a plus. But I don't see how you're going to fill our requirements with a storm."

Her eyebrows rose. "In weather, very little is impossible, Mr. Lynch. Have you heard of hailstones and lightning from a clear sky, or airliners falling a thousand feet in a pocket of low pressure with no reason to be? Weirdly shaped symmetrical clouds that get mistaken for UFOs? On one hand, the chain of cause-and-effect for such things is so unlikely that they don't happen often. On the other hand, climate and weather are such a Dodgem rink of variables that they're bound to happen once in a while." Her voice got soft, thoughtful, distant. "I just need to… reach into the chain of cause-and-effect, identify the pertinent underlying forces at work, tweak one here, suppress another there… guide it into being." She turned away. "I need to be alone for a little while. I'm going to my room."

Anna left his side. "And I need to go shopping."

"Good God, woman. That seems to be your answer to everything these days."

-0-

"_Uniforms?_"

Anna nodded happily, holding up a pair of camouflage pants mottled in six shades of gray. "What better way to show them we're organized and we mean business? They may be in uniform, too, dressed like SWAT cops. But this pattern is better for operations in uncertain light… which the Princess will be providing, I think." She produced a gray tee shirt and a matching vest with numerous pockets, and passed them to Bobby, along with a pair of sturdy black hiking shoes. "By the way, where is she?"

"Still in her room, meditating, or communing with the spirits, or something," Eddie said.

"She can have hers later, then. Everything should fit. I have all your sizes." She passed clothing to Eddie and Roxanne, then looked at Caitlin, sitting on the couch. "You were a challenge, though."

The girl's face twisted in a familiar expression. "Couldn't find something big enough, I suppose."

"Oh, no. Surplus stores sell BDUs to fit a grizzly. But… remember what happened to your jacket at the mall? And _everything_ in New Mexico?" Caitlin didn't answer, but color rose in her cheeks. Bobby raised an eyebrow; Eddie eyed the big redhead speculatively, until Roxanne glowered at him. Then he returned his attention to Anna, rearranging his face into a picture of innocent attention.

Anna produced a parcel which obviously hadn't come from a military surplus store: it was twine-handled and quite fancy and no bigger than a sandwich bag. "Hon, you tend to draw fire. When that happens, you're going to need something you know will stay close to your skin. Can't have you getting distracted by worries about your modesty." She passed the bag over.

Kat reached in and drew out a fistful of black Spandex. She shook it out, and it assumed the form of a leotard for a ten-year-old. Her eyes widened. "No way. This wouldn't fit _you_."

"It's chain-stitched and double-knit, very stretchy and durable. The sales girl assured me it would fit you like a glove."

"A surgical glove, maybe. Anna, even if I can squeeze into this, I'll never get it over a bra."

"No," she said. "You won't. Probably not even panties."

The girl's cheeks flamed. "_Anna._"

"You wear it under your _clothes_, hon. No one's going to see it unless something happens to your BDUs. In which case, you might be _very_ glad you're wearing something skintight that covers you from collarbones to crotch." She glanced at the boys, who were staring at the tiny garment hanging from Kat's hand. Roxanne was pounding Eddie's shoulder to no effect. "Maybe I should have shown it to you in private. Sorry, hon."

Kat dropped it into the bag. "I'm not saying I'll wear it, but thanks, anyway."

Next, Anna presented each of them with a hinged-lid box, slightly larger than a case for glasses. Eddie lifted the lid to reveal a pair of transparent amber sports glasses. He put them on, fiddling with the flexible microphone stalk built into one ear bow. "Futurific. How do I look?"

"Like an extra from some low-budget sci-fi movie," Bobby said, as he put his own set on.

"Dude. You look like Booster Gold."

"I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult, and I'm afraid to ask for an explanation."

"Let me guess," Kat said, holding the open box in her hand and looking at the amber lenses. "Improve your vision in dim light?"

Anna nodded. "The transceiver is low-power FM, range maybe three miles. One shared channel, so practice strict radio discipline. As team leader, Kat can use it to talk to anyone, but the rest of you use it only to talk to her. It has the best commercial encryption system available, which means IO could crack it in about half a second. So be circumspect in your radio traffic; no names, and no mention of home or what we do when we're not dropping the hammer on IO. If we ever have to do something like this again, I'll make sure we have better gear, but this is the best I could get off the shelf." She showed them a tiny dial. "Three positions: off, on, and voice-activated. Just cough or click your tongue before you talk, so Kat doesn't miss your first word. How are you kids planning to pair off?"

"Bobby with Roxanne, Eddie with Sarah." The tall redhead looked down at her. "Are you going with Mr. Lynch?"

She shook her head. "You can't go in alone. You're the team leader. You need someone to watch your back. Jack will be okay by himself." She gathered up the rest of her purchases. "You may have to fend for yourselves at dinnertime. There's plenty in the freezer to choose from."

"Got it covered, Anna," Kat said. "Where are _you_ going?"

"To my room." She offered the girl a tiny smile. "I think I need to commune with the spirits too."

Once in her room, she locked the door and sat on the bed, thinking deeply. She browsed her catalogue of "experimental" behaviors, trying to assemble a persona that would be immediately different from the one she'd been crafting for two years. This new personality couldn't be too over-the-top to be believable, but she'd have to be someone who could throw a scare into anyone who met her. She'd have to be a lot less like Tinkerbelle, and a lot more like Two. She culled heroines and villainesses from television and movie portrayals, and settled on a blueprint for a Genactive guerilla largely based on, but distinct from, Anna the housekeeper. The conversion program included a time-to-completion estimate; she was surprised to see how long the change would require, and how extensive the alterations to her core personality.

She sighed. _It has to be done. We've only got one chance at this; it's got to work the first time._ She set the program running. It would be a while before she felt any changes, as components of her personality were buffered and moved aside to make room for the almost-stranger entering her conscious mind. She'd have to be very careful around the kids, and hold back the most obvious personality changes, until they were all committed, and she'd had a chance to explain.

She looked at her reflection in the mirrored closet door: a tiny girl with short blonde hair, sitting primly with knees together on the edge of the bed. She looked as dangerous as a housecat. That was one of her design specifications, she knew, but now she _needed_ to look dangerous, and she had to do it without making any gross changes to her appearance. This might not be the last time IO would have to be confronted by a Gen Twelve-five, and there was only so much she could do to change her looks; similarities in body and facial structure would have to be explained convincingly.

_Sisters. Five sisters._

-0-

"Well, what do you think?" Kat turned, twisting her head, trying to get a good look at herself without a mirror. Her expression was dubious.

Roxy lay on her sister's bed with a _Teen Beat_ spread on her chest. Two years sharing a bedroom had eroded Kat's ridiculous hang-ups about showing skin, at least to her. "Doesn't hide much," she said diplomatically. Actually, even though it was opaque, the leotard didn't hide a thing. It looked sprayed on, in fact, with a lot of thinner in the paint. She could even see how much her sister shaved off her landing strip, and a tiny birthmark on the side of her right breast. If Kat had had a mirror in her bedroom, like any normal female her age, the outfit wouldn't have stayed on for ten seconds. "How's it feel?"

"Like a second skin, only I can feel a little warmth from it. More comfortable than I expected."

"Well, that's what's important, right? If anybody gets a chance to see you in it, it means you're already in deep shit." She grinned. "Maybe it'll spoil their aim."

"So you think I should?"

"Course." She grinned again. "_I _would."

Kat nodded and started to strip it off. Roxy lifted her magazine up to her eyes and looked over it. _There are times I'd kill for a bod like that; you can bet _I'd_ know how to use it. Grunge would never look at another girl again, just for starts. And she acts like it's a costume that doesn't fit right._

Which reminded her. "I need to hit a carryout before we leave. I need a pack of cigs and a lighter."

Kat's brows knitted. "Didn't you buy a pack yesterday? And what's wrong with your lighter?"

"I put the cigs in my case already. I'm not taking those with me. The jacket either."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "Hard to explain. I just don't want to risk running into the original owner with his stuff on." _Or anyone who'd recognize those things as belonging to somebody Mr. Lynch left in the guardhouse shower._

"How are you feeling?" Kat stepped into her panties and reached for her bra, which looked about as sturdy – and as sexy - as a suspension bridge. "About tomorrow, I mean."

"Petrified. Not of getting killed, of getting caught. You?"

"Angry. Ready to hit something. When Mr. Lynch talked about us becoming a Keeper campfire story, I could have kissed him." She slipped on a white tee and pulled on her jeans.

"If you hurt somebody you don't need to, you'll be mad at yourself later."

"I know." Kat sat on the edge of the bed to tie her shoes. "I'm glad Anna's coming with. What do you suppose she's doing in her room?"

"Can't guess. Course, I don't know what Sarah's doing, either. What's that thing they call each other now?"

"Shikasin? I don't know. But it's an endearment, which puts it light-years ahead of what she was calling Anna just a month ago."

"A _week_ ago. It's, like, alien abduction or something. She's not the same girl, I swear."

"I just hope it lasts. Bobby doesn't need his heart broken."

"They're really… Really?"

"She's coming out of his room the past two mornings to go to the bathroom and brush her teeth. Further deponent sayeth not."

-0-

Anna, sitting at the computer in Jack's study, hit the print command and watched the three-page document drop into the out tray. When she picked it up, she removed a blank sheet, folded it into quarters, and wrote a short note on the inside, as if it were a greeting card. Then, all four sheets in hand, she put her head out the door to make sure the hall was clear, and hurried next door to the bedroom.

Back in her room, she took out her five wigs. They were all made from real hair, and expensive, the two long ones ruinously so. But they fit well, and looked quite real, as long as they were secure. She tried them on, trying to create a look that fitted the persona taking shape in her mind. The short, dark brown one seemed the most sensible, because a longer one might be difficult to keep on in a running battle. But when she placed it on her head, something about her image in the mirror made her pull it back off._ I wonder what Ivana's hair is like?_ The light brown and chestnut ones fit well enough, she supposed, but they didn't appeal. That left the blonde and black ones, both utterly impractical because of their length.

She set the blonde wig on her head; the honey-colored tresses hung past her waist, making her look like a pint-sized Lady Godiva. She shook her head violently, and the wig twisted on her head. _I'd have to glue it on._ She set it on a floor stand, brought it to the mirror, and looked at her face as she ran her fingers through the heavy locks.

She thought back to her recently uncovered memories of combat with her "sisters." _Five had shoulder-length hair, light brown. Four's was black, straight, and very long. Two's was blonde. I'd bet real money that One and Three had brown hair too, even though I bought these wigs before my first vision. But why did I buy the blonde one?_

She looked down at it. Her fingers had gathered the hair into three heavy strands and were braiding it. But she had no memory of ever braiding hair. She checked her file log, and discovered the Alpha file at the top of her queue. _Creator, why would hair braiding be in a combat-skills program?_

She rubbed the strands between her fingers. _Wrong color. It should be black. Aha._ She let it slip from her fingers. Then she ran a hand through the cap of short blonde hair on her head. _How did they attach this? So far as I know, they never fall out. But they must wear out sooner or later; there must be some way of installing more._ She grasped a single hair, pulling gently; it held fast. _Like the old joke about the balding guy, holding a hair in his hand and saying, "What held it in yesterday?"_

Suddenly, the image of her grasping a hair swelled in her vision until the single strand looked the thickness of a pencil. She followed it down until it disappeared into her magnified scalp. A number appeared in her mind:

110.201.137

An address. _Let go_, she thought, and the hair came free. She stared at it a moment, then, with the address firmly in her mind, tried to poke it back into her head. She felt her hand guided unerringly to the same site, felt the hair touch her scalp and be accepted. She tugged; it was as firmly rooted as ever. _It must be like the seams for my guns._ She removed and replaced random hairs from all over her head, until she had a map of the sectors designated by the address system.

She looked at the wig in front of her. Using her nails, she carefully nipped a single hair. She experimented, and discovered that her scalp would accept the new hair as readily as the original.

She stared into the mirror a moment, gathering her nerve. Then she gathered a double fistful of hair and let it fall out. She dropped it into a small shopping bag and continued the process until only her eyebrows and lashes remained. Then she cut the wig free from its matting, leaving her with a thick fistful of hair, and began inserting replacements, one hand feeding individual hairs into the fingers of the other. Her speed increased until her fingers were a blur, moving like a sewing-machine needle. _But there are over a hundred thousand hairs on the human head. At this rate, I won't be done till morning. Guess I'll be testing my husband's understanding again tonight._

16


	2. Lock and Load

Wednesday April 5 2006  
Escondido

Sarah Rainmaker sat cross-legged on her grandmother's replica bed, hands in her lap, waiting for dawn. She'd spent the night awake but turned inward, almost in a trance. Some part of her consciousness had registered the opening and closing of her door twice during the evening, and once in the middle of the night, but her callers only looked in from the doorway and withdrew.

The dawn brought Anna's incredible artwork to life. Sarah sat placidly through the show until it ended, then rose and headed for the shower. She scrubbed until her skin glowed, then padded down the hallway, naked and unconcerned at this early hour. Then she slipped on a simple cotton dress without undergarments, and padded barefoot downstairs to the kitchen. As soon as she reached it, though, she became certain that she shouldn't eat, that the fast she'd begun yesterday noon was giving her strength. She settled for a sip of water, and headed back into the hallway.

From the telephone stand, she picked up a spiral notebook and a pencil, and returned to the small kitchen table. She drew out a chair and sat, arranging the items in front of her. She placed her palms on the table on either side of her tools, and stared at the blank paper for a few moments. Then, she tentatively picked up the pencil and began to draw.

-0-

Bobby woke alone in bed for the first time since Sunday. He rose and crossed the hall to look in on Sarah. Her bed was empty and made. He dressed, brushed his teeth, and headed downstairs, and found that, at six A.M., he was the last up. Anna sat alone at the dining table, wearing a hoodie with the hood up over her head, staring at nothing. The others, his dad included, were standing in the kitchen with cold breakfast and coffee, watching Sarah at the little table with a pad and pencil.

She was sketching, carefully making each line in a way that made Bobby think of calligraphy rather than doodling. "Kat, can you get me a current weather map off the computer?"

"Aerial? How big?"

The pencil lifted off the page for a few quick scribbles in the margin. "Oh, here to the border, mountains to the sea. No, make that international waters. Satellite photo's good. If you can throw in isobars, even better." Softly she said, as if to herself, "I just need to know where everything's at, so I can find a starting point."

He craned his neck to see her work. There were formulae and calculations on the margins, and some sketches that looked like meteorological notes. But the central item on the paper was a carefully drawn stylized bird that looked like it belonged on a piece of pottery or beadwork.

"It's just a focus," she said absently, as she thickened the line on an outstretched wing. She never looked up from the paper and the pencil never ceased its careful progress. "Everything seems to revolve around it, somehow."

He leaned close. "Can I do something, Sarah? Can I help?"

"Maybe later, baby. Not now."

He felt lightheaded. He sat down next to Anna at the dining table. "All right. What the hell is going on? I prayed for you guys to get along. I should have remembered God enjoys His little jokes. _Did you hear what she called me?_ And she's been laying her hand on my chest the way you do. The first time she did it, it gave me goosebumps. What are you doing to her?"

She looked up at him from the shadow of the hood, eyes wide, and shook her head gently. "I'm not doing it, Bobby. She is." She looked towards the open door to the kitchen. "She's paying me a great honor, is my shikasin. I studied her to learn how to win a man's love. Apparently, she's looking to me for tips on how to keep it."

-0-

Sarah moved the pencil along the paper, but it almost seemed as if the pencil was moving itself, and she was just hanging on. She stared down at the drawing as if it were a television screen, showing her images of alternate worlds.

Several sheets of paper and clear Mylar dropped on the table next to Sarah's pad. "What's this?"

"Aerial map. The clear overlays are pressure zones in the same scale and location; just line them up and drop them on top."

"Hmp. It's _so_ handy having a computer geek for a sister." She glanced up, and saw that the others had left; the two of them were alone. As she heard the big redhead start to turn away, Sarah said, "Caitlin."

Her tone brought the other girl short as if on a tether.

Sarah kept her eyes on the tabletop. "That day in the hall at school, I did something impulsive. But not the impulse you thought. At home... My parents' house, that is… I kiss my sisters on the mouth all the time. That's all I meant it to be."

"I-"

"But I suddenly realized what you must have thought was happening, and I… That's why I stopped. And why I was so reserved with you afterwards. I was ashamed." She gave a tiny shrug, barely more than a twitch. "You're lovely to look at, but so are my sisters. Straight girls are just eye candy; they're not my type, literally. I've never tried to turn one. I'm not a predator."

"And I'm not a lesbian, Sarah." A hand came to rest on her shoulder. "But it was nice, just the same. You made me feel cared about and wanted, and I _so _needed to feel wanted just then. Even though it never would have gone any farther, and I was uneasy about it later, wondering what you might do next – walking on eggshells around you sometimes, really." She caught a whiff of shampoo, something floral and girlish that seemed very out of place on a redheaded Amazon, but perfect for a girl who slept with a pink teddy bear. "I should have figured it out. I should have talked to you, at least, long ago, but I was afraid you'd misunderstand."

Sarah reached up to rest her fingers on the girl's hand. "Well, aren't we a pair of ninnies. I've missed you."

The hand on her shoulder squeezed briefly. "Likewise, sister. Let's not make that mistake again."

-0-

Bobby climbed the stairs to the roof, eased the door open, and looked out without leaving the doorway. He'd expected to see Sarah standing up on the roof somewhere, but she wasn't visible anywhere on that flat black expanse. The morning sun was just warming the rooftop, and a steady breeze drifted over the walls and played with his hair.

"Up here." Above and behind him, on top of the stairwell housing. "No need to be stealthy, Bobby. I felt you coming."

He stepped out and looked up. She stood on the roof of the little structure, facing south. The breeze stirred tendrils of her hair and sent them floating like wisps of black silk. She didn't look down at him.

"Sorry." He moved back towards the door. "I know you said you needed to be alone. I just had to check up on you."

"No. Stay." Her gaze and voice were miles away. "I was wrong to keep you away. I'm stronger with you here."

_Combining power, somehow?_ "I can get the others."

"No." She smiled at the horizon. "I'm sure it only works with you." She raised her arms in an odd position: upper arms horizontal and straight out from her sides, forearms vertical, palms forward. Instead of making her look like a stickup victim, it gave him the impression she was feeling the wind on her palms. She pivoted to the east, slowly, her arms in the same position.

"Can we talk, Sarah?"

"Maybe a little. I may not make sense, or I may not answer at all."

"What are you doing now?"

A moment of silence, then: "Questing. Tuning in. Establishing uplink, I don't know. There aren't any words. Not in English, anyway." She added softly, "I'm sure the People had words once. But if they're not forgotten, I never learned them."

She turned east and changed her arm position. Now they were spread out from her sides in a graceful arc, palms out and up. He thought of souvenir-shop statues of Indian chiefs spreading their feather capes like wings. "It's so big," she almost whispered. "Layers. Currents. Motion everywhere. Everything moving everything else." She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the morning sun. "The Father. The source of all power, the engine that drives it all." She turned slowly to the west. "Ocean, place of nurture and growth. Mother." She dropped her chin, inhaled deeply, and let it out in a breathy sigh that sounded almost sexual. "There. Yes, there." He felt embarrassed, as if he'd walked in on her to find her in bed with a stranger. Her head drifted sideways slightly. "That's where we begin."

She opened her eyes, staring off towards the distant sea. She lifted one foot high and brought it forward, stamping down heavily. She did it twice more, throwing her arms forward at the same time, as if reaching for something. "Heh. Heh. Heya," she said softly.

It wasn't a dance. But it reminded him of one, much simpler than the ones performed at Native American festivals. An idea came to the surface of his thoughts.

_Gen isn't something new, at least not all of it. Some of it must be very old. A long time ago, there were People who really could call the rain. Other People watched them at work, and thought the magic was in the movements, not the people using them as a focus. Over time, they made a ceremony of it, with costumes and music. Then the talent faded away; the genes diluted or fizzled out somehow, and all they had left was the ritual, still meaningful maybe, but stripped of its old power. And whites looked at it and saw quaint superstition._

After several minutes, something changed. She was still chanting, but now her arms were lifted to the sky. Suddenly she gave out a loud "Hah!" and threw her arms down, bowing her head.

The wind died.

She held the pose, silent. He didn't dare break the hush with so much as a shoe scrape; he froze, breathing shallowly through parted lips.

The breeze puffed, died again, and came back from a different direction.

She turned slightly to the south, still looking towards the distant sea. She lifted her hands away from her body slightly. "It's started. It needs careful watching, and there won't be much to see for a while, but it's all in motion." She shivered. Then she shivered again, harder. "C-cold."

He got a hand on the top edge of the structure and pulled up. Aside from her shaking, which was getting worse, she didn't move. "Don't t-t-t-touch me. Not even my hair."

"I won't." he heated the air around her, to the temperature of a blanket straight from the dryer. The quaking subsided. "Guess that's why the pros do it around a fire."

She nodded, still looking off to the horizon. "I'm not creating a fraction of the energy it's drawing. I'm just redirecting it, starting a bonfire with a handful of dead grass. The energy it pulls from me is hardly a token. Still, I feel like a small fuse in a very heavy circuit."

"So we're done up here?"

"You are. But not me, not even close." Her eyelids drooped. "It's started. But it's got a long way to climb up the chain of cause-and-effect before it's strong enough to feed itself. Anything could tip it back, smother it. I have to mind it carefully." Her voice grew distant again, as if she kept drifting in and out of the world. "Later, when it's served its purpose, I may have to knock the props out from under it to put it out. It may be self-sustaining by then."

"Self-sustaining? You mean, like a real storm?"

"No." She shook her head slightly. "Like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Permanent."

_A monster hurricane anchored off the coast of Southern California; wouldn't that put a dent in the tourist trade._ Then he thought it through. _It would change prevailing winds and ocean currents, change weather patterns all over the world; turn farmland into deserts, and deserts into swamps. Change the seasons. Melt the ice caps, or send the glaciers marching down from the Poles._ "Cripes, Sarah. You're really playing with fire."

"Exactly what I told myself when I climbed into your bed." Her hair was floating out behind her like a banner now. "I don't think I should go with you," she went on. "I doubt I can control it properly if I'm in the middle of it. I need to keep my distance. Tell Eddie I'm sorry. I was honestly looking forward to buddying up with him." The corner of her mouth lifted. "Maybe next week we can go bowling or something. Best go now. I don't need the power boost you give me anymore, but I need focus more than ever, and you're a distraction. A wonderful distraction, but a distraction."

He felt himself grinning like a kid. "What, no goodbye kiss?"

"I'll kiss you twice as hard when you get back. Shoo."

Approximately 1 mile northwest of Miramar Reservoir

"So this is the hidden hangar for the Batplane." Eddie stared out the van window at the huge warehouse complex at the intersection of two busy interstates. It looked like a million square feet under roof, fronted by bustling loading docks and open sheds, surrounded by miles of tall chain link fence. A parade of trucks, some empty, some full, rolled in and out along the wide driveway. Fork trucks roamed the asphalt, buzzing in and out of the buildings. The employee parking lot along one side of the building covered acres, and was nearly full. "Don't you have any secret hideouts that _look_ like secret hideouts?"

"I hope not. The best place to hide something is someplace no one will think to look." The L-man turned into the parking lot, cruising down the aisle past all the parked cars, headed towards the back.

"We're almost back in La Jolla." Kat stared out her window at the parked cars without really looking at them. "Miramar can't be more than a couple of miles away."

"An escape vehicle's a lot more useful if it's close at hand. That's why I'm going to move it after this, if we don't wreck it."

The perimeter fence separated the lot from the rest of the property, but here in the back, a rolling gate was set into it, secured with a chain and padlock. Mr. Lynch passed a key to Anna; without a word, she jumped out of the shotgun seat, unlocked the gate, pushed it open for the van to pass through, and closed and locked it behind them while they waited for her.

Eddie watched her climb back in. She'd been acting strange and quiet all morning, staring off into space half the time, and hardly speaking, giving short answers to direct questions and then lapsing into silence again. If she hadn't been what she was, he would have thought she was stoned. He eyed Anna's outfit: loose slacks, ball cap, bulky hooded sweatshirt with the oversized hood pulled up over her head, nearly hiding her face. "How come you're the only one not dressed like a commando?"

"In case one of us has to expose herself to public view, like I just did. But there's another reason. I'm not dressed to fight because I'm not going with you."

"What?" Kat leaned forward. "But you said you were."

"I said you'd need my help. You'll get it. But I'd rather explain later, before you leave."

On this side of the fence, a broken brick road led off to the distant rear of the building. The rest of the area looked like an old junkyard, with rusted-out machines poking up from among the weeds. The noise and activity of the warehouse was all on the street side; here, the building was so quiet he could hear bird calls. They bumped along the overgrown roadway towards the corner of the building.

The back of the building looked even more desolate. The brown land and derelict structures seemed to continue to the horizon. The skeletal framework of an overhead crane stretched across the back of the building; high overhead, the rusted-out cab hung suspended over several equally rusty sets of railroad tracks almost invisible among trash and weeds. The whole huge building was sided in white sheet metal panels, but one at the near corner had come loose, exposing dark brick underneath. "What _is_ this place?"

"It's the original warehouse. The truck terminal out front was added decades later. All the goods arrived at the rail terminal back here and were loaded onto trucks for local distribution. When truck transport took over deliveries to the depot too, this part of the building was abandoned. Building new truck docks out front was cheaper than refurbishing the rail docks, and more convenient."

He turned the van up a steep ramp and onto a raised apron of concrete, wide as a road, which ran all across the back of the warehouse. "The crane still works, or did when we brought the plane here. The track will take it inside the doors."

"We didn't bring anything to haul the plane on."

"We're taking off from here. If it's still in one piece after the mission, and circumstances permit, I've got another place to put it, nearer home."

The doors were set in the center of the back wall. They were big sliders, about forty feet wide by twenty high, and didn't look like they'd been opened since Reagan was president. The L-man handed Anna another key, and she got out to pop the padlock holding them shut. She got her fingers in the crack between them, opened a shoulder-wide gap, and pushed them apart like Samson bringing down the temple. Heavy they might be, but they rolled smooth and quiet until they thudded into their stops.

It was dark inside, but the square of daylight from the open doorway revealed a rough block wall about thirty yards beyond. The L-man put the bus back in gear and rolled inside. Anna reached around the doorway and flipped a switch. Overhead lights came on, dimly at first until the big bulbs warmed up.

The space was about ninety feet deep, thirty high, and stretched away on either side of the doorway to the building's side walls, maybe a hundred yards each way. He noticed that the brickwork walls ended at the corners, and didn't extend across the back of the building; the back outside wall was just sheet metal and girders. The wall that divided the space from the rest of the warehouse was cement block, and stretched from floor to ceiling with no openings he could see. The mortar joints were extruded and sloppy, so he knew he was looking at the untooled back of the wall. It made him think of some secret room between the walls of an old house. "Hard to believe putting this up was cheaper than rebuilding the docks."

The L-Man pointed the van's nose hard right as Anna got in. They rolled towards that end of the room, towards a semi-sized shape that bulked under a tarp at the far end. "It wasn't, really. But I wanted the space, and it was a plausible excuse."

"So they just built it for you? A fifty thousand square-foot secret room. You know the owner, or what?"

"I say hello to him every morning in the mirror." They reached the covered object, and parked against the wall nearby. The tribe... no, _team_… piled out. The L-man turned to Rox. "The tarp. Would you do the honors?"

The tarp floated up and drifted sideways, sliding off the object underneath. It was an aircraft, for sure, but different from anything Eddie had ever seen. It looked like the child of a Stealth bomber and an alien spacecraft. The flat black fuselage was a flattened oval in cross section, and the wings were folded and rotated flat against the sides, like the wings of a nesting bird. The tail was split in a wide V, and hardly stuck up past the cockpit. It was tiny for a cargo plane, but it looked super compact and dangerous. "What _is_ this thing?"

"Prototype troop transport, a type sometimes called a 'direct-action penetrator'. For covert or quick-strike teams," the L-man said. "Never used. By the time it was finished, we weren't in conflict anyplace with defenses tough enough to warrant putting it in the field. It's fast and quiet in flight, and it's got the radar signature of a sparrow. It can drop a squad into a secure LZ, and you'll never know it was there. Or, if the LZ's hot, it can appear out of nowhere, clear its own landing area, and hold it until the troops come back, or even provide air support. Official designation was CIV, Covert Insertion Vehicle. But the people who ran the trials on it called it The Dragon." He turned to Kat. "It was built to fit on an oversize flatbed, barely. Not much head room."

He noticed Anna hadn't bailed out with the rest of them to gawp at the plane. Instead, she'd opened the back doors of the van and pulled out a big duffel and slung the strap over her shoulder. She was walking around the plane, headed for someplace behind it. He followed her and saw a small roofed enclosure built against the end wall, about the right size for an office, with a blacked-out window and a single door. Since its walls were brick as well, he figured it dated back to when the place was a shipping dock, and open to the elements.

By now, everyone had noticed, and were starting to trail her. Bobby said, "Anna. What are you doing?"

She paused at the door. He noticed she hadn't thrown the big hood back, even though they were under cover. "Kids. I'm going to go in there and change." Something in the tone of her voice gave the simple statement an unsettling weight.

"You said you weren't coming with us." Kat's eyebrows pushed together. "What are you changing into?"

"Someone else." She looked like she was about to try something scary-thrilling for the first time, like riding a coaster, or skydiving, or sex. "You all know this is more than a rescue mission. We mean to convince IO they're under attack from a new and unknown group of Genactives trying to form a resistance movement. Now that the 'globetrotter' diversion is burned, we need a new one to keep IO chasing shadows, or we'll never live in peace. You know the man we're going after is an old friend of Jack's who still works at IO. He's been pretending to be working undercover among the Gens, and 'discovered' this new threat. He's been selling the story to his bosses, and nearly convinced them. But they're a suspicious bunch. They think he may be playing them, so they're holding him prisoner until he delivers a new-type Gen. So we're going to give them one, but not me. They need to be convinced I'm part of a larger group, so they need to see there's more than one of us. If we can give them one hard push, we'll take them off-balance and make them afraid to disbelieve."

She looked earnestly at each of them from the shadow of the hood. "You've got to play along, and you've got to be convincing. We don't have much time to practice. The only way this will work is if you can watch me go in there, and pretend I went out the back door and someone who looks like me walked in. Can you do it?"

They looked at each other uncertainly. "Sure," Bobby said. "What do we call you?"

Anna lifted a corner of her mouth. "I'm sure she'll introduce herself." She stepped to her husband and tipped her face up for a quick kiss; he flipped the brim of the ball cap carefully to reach her. "Bye, love. Be careful. All of you be careful, and I'll see you at home." She turned, so quickly the duffel swung on her shoulder, and disappeared through the door.

"Never gonna work." Rox shook her head. "What's she going to do, put on a wig and glasses? They'll see through it in a heartbeat."

"I don't know," he said. "When she came home with the L-man, I wasn't expecting anybody but her in that car, but I _still_ didn't recognize her until she said something. Did you?"

"No," she said slowly, "but this time we _know_ it's her, and the first time one of us calls her 'Anna' instead of 'Jane,' or whatever, the game's up."

"Then don't do it." The L-man turned and started towards the big doors.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Rox took a step after him.

He waved her off. "I'll be right back with the crane. Once it's inside the building, I'll likely need some help. All of you stay here and out of sight." He walked on, and disappeared into the sunlight.

"This isn't metal." Kat was examining the plane, running her hand over the matte-black skin. "And I don't think this is paint. It's what it's made of."

"Let me see." He laid a hand on it, and sank in. _Tough and springy. Non-metallic. Single layer, about three-quarters of an inch thick. No coating. No seams or fasteners. _He withdrew his hand, and watched the black skin fade to normal. "You're right. It's one big casting. Or maybe they grew it, I don't know."

Bobby's attention wasn't on the plane. He was looking at the block divider wall, and maybe thinking about what was on the other side. "Hard to get your head around it. The kind of money he's got. How many places like this do you think he owns?"

"Well, he doesn't keep all his cash under the mattress. Bet this place makes him money, besides."

Kat nodded. "He told me once that he's worth more now than when he met us, even after all the money he's spent. Did you ever dream you'd end up a rich man's son?"

"No." Bobby's mouth and eyes tightened. "I used to dream my real mom and dad would show up all hysterical over finally finding me, hold me like they'd never let me go again, and take me home to live with them forever. The last time I had it, I was eleven years old."

_In a bedroom with plywood nailed over the window, and a hasp and padlock on the outside of the door._ The little hairs on Eddie's forearms and the back of his neck rose, thinking about Bobby as a kid in that place.

A grinding screech from outside and a bunch of loud pops like gunshots sent them all pelting towards the doors. Kat reached the opening before the rest of them were halfway there. She looked up and yelled, horrified, "Oh, God. _Roxy!_"

They reached the door; Kat pointed. The Man in Black was dangling by one arm from the tilted cab of the crane, thirty feet up. The whole rig looked ready to fall to the ground at a hiccup. The L-man seemed to be okay; he was cussing in three languages, sounded like, and even the English had a lot of words he hadn't thought the old guy knew.

Rox reached up towards the cab, making one of her weird hand gestures. "Mr. Lynch! Let go, I've got you."

The L-man released his grip and drifted down to the ground as gently as a passenger in an elevator. He looked up at the cab and the bird's nest of snapped cable sprouting from the big spool alongside. "Well, that's that. Guess thirty years outdoors with no maintenance was a little too long." He picked his way through the weeds to the dock where they stood.

"How are we going to get it out?"

"There are ways." The L-man clambered up onto the apron. "We'll just try to pick the best one."

They made their way back to the plane. "I could push it," Kat suggested.

"That still leaves the problem of getting it off the dock. Roxanne, can you lift it so we can push it over the edge without burying the nose?"

"Let's see." The triple-sleeved shocks on the landing gear telescoped to a ridiculous length as the body rose. "Heavier than it looks." When the underside was eight feet above the ground, the left wheel lifted an inch off the concrete, then the machine settled back on its gear. Rox looked pained, and there was a sheen of perspiration on her upper lip. "It's the biggest thing I've ever floated, but I think I can do it."

"I could lift it." Kat started to duck under the plane.

The L-man stopped her with a hand on her upper arm, but quickly let go, as if her skin was hot and singed his fingers. "I'm sure you could, but you might damage it. You can't reach both underbody hardpoints at the same time."

"I don't think it makes any difference. I could even pick it up by a wing."

"I'm not saying you're wrong. But this is our only ride." He looked at it. "I could fly it out, I suppose."

"'Fly it out'."

He turned to Rox. "Didn't I say? It's a VTOL aircraft, like a Harrier. I could land it in our back yard. The yard wouldn't look like much afterwards, though, unless I dial the engines way down. The exhaust is _hot_."

"Wayull, now." A new voice from the office, sort of twangy. "You all been waitin for me?"


	3. The New Recruit

Everyone turned. A stranger who looked like Anna stood in the doorway, a faint smile lifting one corner of her mouth. She was dressed as they were, only more so. She wore heavy hunting boots instead of the rest of the team's light hiking models, boots that looked made for kicking the stuffing out of somebody while he was down. Her flak jacket was loaded with webbing loops and pockets holding an assortment of mysterious and scary-looking stuff, from ammo and grenades to tools and objects whose purpose he couldn't guess. The butt of an assault rifle rested on her right hip, an M-16, looked like, with a second barrel under the regular one, stubby and fat as a soup can; a holster just below held a biggish automatic. On her other hip was a sheathed knife; the blade looked about ten inches long.

Her hair was honey-blonde and superlong, done up in a heavy braid that hung to the small of her back; he could see the tip of it swing as she turned her head to take them all in. In front, she'd left a couple of thick locks loose at the temples that hung down to her waist and framed her face. She wore amber glasses like theirs, but perched on top of her head. Her eyes were pale gray, and filled with amusement as she accepted everyone's stares.

"Eyes back in yer heads, boys," she said in a Reba McIntyre drawl. She tucked a long strand behind one ear; he noticed she was wearing fingerless leather gloves. "So tell me. Side from bein yer next wet dream, how do I look?"

"Mean." Bobby's voice was awestruck. "Ready to take on an army."

"Battlefield Barbie," he said. "Comes with everything you see here. Be the first kid on your block to have one, or else."

Her smile widened. "Oh, that's _good_. 'Battlefield Barbie.' Cept for one thing." She gave the L-man a challenging look. "I ain't _nobody's_ little doll."

Mr. Lynch folded his arms and leaned against the nose gear. "Obviously. What the hell are you doing here?" Clearly, he wasn't going to have any trouble with the pretense. Eddie figured he'd gotten a little extra warning.

"We got a stake in this." She set the rifle carefully against the wall by the doorway. "Your little towhead let the cat out of the bag at the mall. Won't say she shunna, but it got those bastards at IO on to us. No point waitin for em to make the first move. They're bound to push us. We might as well push first, and hard." She looked at each of them. "She tells me all about her darlin kids. Wears me out with it, truth to tell. But I spose we'll get along. The name's Dixie."

He snorted. On top of the accent, it was just too much.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "It's a better name than my Daydee gimme, even though it sounds like. You got a problem with that, _Percy_?"

Every taunt from his childhood rose up from his heart and closed his throat. No one had used his first name in years. He hadn't thought Anna even knew it.

She took a step towards him. "Ask me, 'Percival Edmund' is a mighty big glass house to be throwin rocks from. They dress you up in little sailor suits when you was a kid?"

He found his voice. "Okay. Sorry. Just stop it."

"Will, now I've wiped that punk-ass smirk off your face. Don't disrespect me again, monkeyboy." She relaxed and said in a more conversational tone, "It's kinda short for Deuxieme. Means 'second' in French."

"Ah," he said carefully. "I, ah, don't get it."

"You would if you met my sisters. Premiere, Troisieme, Quatrieme, and Cinquieme. Or Pam, Tracy, Kate, and Cindy, as they'd _much_ rather be called."

"Ouch."

She nodded. "Daydee had a twisted sense a humor." Her eyes lit on Rox, and the coffin nail tucked behind her ear. She plucked it. "Not yer last one, I'm sure. Got a light?"

"_What?_"

She held it between her first two fingers. "I said, 'got a light'?"

Rox stared at her. "What are you gonna do with it?"

"Whaddaya _usually_ do with one?" She held the end to the flame from Rox's proffered lighter. When it lit, she tipped her head back and closed her eyes as she took the first drag. The smoke drifted out of her mouth. "Ah, bliss."

Rox put her lighter away. "Too much. I've never enjoyed a cig that much in my life."

"You would if you quit as often as me," Dixie answered without opening her eyes. "Keeps the vice fresh, if you catch my meanin. Guess this week I just quit buyin." She took another hit. "God. Yes."

Rox wouldn't let go of it. "Come on. You're making it sound better than sex."

She opened her eyes and gave Rox a crooked grin. "How would _you_ know, punkin? Been slippin out with the monkeyboy while your sister's not lookin?" She turned to him. "Hope you're usin a rubber."

"I've heard stories about your charm," the L-man said. "But I didn't believe them until now."

She took two steps to close within arm's length of their patron, and looked up. "You must be terrific in the sack, Jocko. She dunt care about money, and it _sure_ cain't be your looks. You gotta be the ugliest man I ever seen who was still livin. Mebbe she just never does it with the lights on, heh?" A sharp intake of breath from one of the girls.

She turned to Bobby. "Now, _this_ is more like it." The hand without the cigarette brushed his open vest aside and rested on his shirt; not over his heart, like Anna's would, but off to the side. Bobby twitched as her last two fingers slid back and forth, and Eddie realized she was stroking his nipple. "You ever get tired of waitin around for Pocahontas, look me up. Won't guarantee more than a one-nighter, though. I get bored easy." She cocked her head. "I try to leave while they're still sleepin. It's _such_ an ordeal, gettin dressed and out the door without lettin on I don't remember their names." Bobby pushed her away, gently but firmly, and she grinned at him.

Ever since Dixie's appearance, Kat had been silently staring at the stranger who wore Anna's face. Dixie took notice finally, and stepped so close to Big Red she had to tip her head all the way back to look at her. "Carrot top, I got a feelin we're gonna tangle before this mission's over. Don't be so sure which of us is stronger."

She turned back to the L-man. "If I'm gonna be a part of this little tea party, you might wanna give me a brief. What's the T.O., and what's our timetable look like?"

Their guardian, unperturbed by their rude little guest, glanced at his watch. "Timetable first. We've got maybe ninety minutes to get this bird prepped and on station, twenty miles off the coast due east of San Diego. We'll orbit the waypoint at thirty thousand for thirty to sixty minutes while Sarah gets her little bombardment ready. We'll ride in on the tail of the storm, maybe ten or twenty minutes, then I drop you off. I want everyone back aboard in no more than thirty, whether the mission's accomplished or not. Then we get the hell out of Dodge, to a place where I have a car stashed. I drop you off again, and you head for home while I stash the bird in its new hangar."

"Wait a minute." Rox stared at the L-man, round-eyed. "You're sending us in there by ourselves?"

"I expect a quick-reaction force nearby. They'll be coming by air. Somebody's got to be up there to meet them. If I ground the plane and go with you, it'll be captured or destroyed. You know what happens then, don't you?"

"'If they take this ship,'" he intoned, "'they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into clothing.'"

"'And if we're very, very lucky,'" Dixie finished, grinning at him, "'they'll do it in that order.'"

He found himself grinning back. "You a Zoë, Dix?"

"More of a Jayne, only smarter and meaner. You?"

"Wash, with a little Shepherd." He added carefully, "What do you think for Anna?"

"Hm. Bout ninety percent Kaylee and River, split even, wrapped round a core of Zoë and Jayne." She glanced at the L-man. "But opinions vary, I'm sure. Bet he'd say she's at least fifty percent Inara."

Rox looked from him to Dixie and back. "Does anyone have a _clue_?"

"No." Kat looked… pouty? "But doesn't it figure that _those_ two would have something in common."

He inclined his head towards her, still looking at Dixie. "Zoë?"

"Nyet. Smidge of all nine, really. She's complicated. And as messy on the inside as she's tidy on the outside." She took a last hit off the cancer stick, stubbed it out in her palm, and dropped it into a front pocket of her vest. "Some girls got it all, I guess. Be easy to hate if she wun so damn sweet."

Rox looked disgusted. "They're comic book characters, aren't they?"

He grinned at her. "Neh. What say, Dix? What we got here?"

"No way. Psych yer girlfriend out yourself."

"What about…" He inclined his head towards the L-man.

"You kiddin? Mal. Ten percent Shepherd, five Simon."

"_Simon?_"

"Oh, yeah." She nodded towards the Man in Black, eyes filled with speculation. "He's got most of Simon's smarts, a smidge of his put-upon attitude, and a pinch of his desperation. Jock, how come no one's watchin our perimeter?"

"Because we got in clean, and I'm not expecting trouble here."

"Tsk. Tsk." She picked up her rifle and headed for the exit. "Team Seven was a _long_ time ago, wunnit?"

As she passed, the L-man grabbed her upper arm, stopping her. She looked pointedly at his hand, but he didn't let go. "Dixie. Let's finish your brief. You asked about the T.O." He waited for her to look him in the eye. "I'm in charge overall. Caitlin runs the team when it hits the ground; I won't second guess her from the air, and I'll likely be too busy anyway. I don't mind input or questions, and standing sentry's a good idea. But if you're disinclined to take our orders, turn your little ass around right now and get the hell out of here."

Her eyes narrowed. Softly, she said, "I got my own orders, Jock. You know that."

His answering look was just as focused and intent, and he _still_ hadn't let go of her. "Understood. But you'd better not endanger my team following them."

"Don't worry, ol' man. I won't play games with your kids' safety. They're important to us too, remember." She shrugged, and he let go. She resumed her walk.

"Hey," Eddie called after her. "What if somebody sees you out there, dressed like that?"

She looked at him with sniper eyes, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. "As if I'm gonna let somebody see me fore I see him." She slipped her headset and amber glasses down onto her eyes. Then, braid bobbing, she trotted down the long room to the daylit opening.

Everyone turned to the L-man. Rox's eyes were accusing. "You knew."

"I knew the plan, and the need for a new character in our little play. I knew what she'd look like. But I met 'Dixie' the same time you did."

"Gawd. Before, I thought I might slip and call her 'Anna'. Instead, I need to remind myself it's really her."

"Yeah," Bobby said. "TV must have been like acting school for her." He rubbed his nipple. "Wonder what channels she's been watching."

"She's been practicing for a long time," Eddie said. "Remember all those weird 'exercises'? The fake accents, the limp, all that other stuff?"

"It's more than just mannerisms." Kat glanced at the doorway. "Or playacting. That's not Anna with a wig and a fake accent and a new vocabulary. Can you imagine her ever making fun of Mr. Lynch's scars, or calling Eddie…" Her voice trailed off.

"'Percival.' Sokay, Red. Guess I shouldn't be so uptight around friends. At least, not friends like these."

"Just as well, I don't think I could call you anything but 'Eddie' anymore. Anyway, she's convincing because there's so much depth to the character. She addressed us together and separately and gave each of us a strong and different first impression. We've been exposed to her for ten minutes, and it seems like we've known her for much longer. That's not a role. It's… another personality."

"And the cheery psycho at the mall was another." Rox's face was grim. "So, which one is the real Anna?"

"_In position,"_ came Dixie's voice over his headset. _"Sittin pretty in the crane scaffolding. No rats in the weeds, and it's business as usual up front. This crane falls, though, it might make enough ruckus to bring somebody round. Hope y'all are gettin somethin done while you're gossipin bout me."_

"Uhh, somebody leave a mike on?"

"No." Caitlin smiled and shook her head. She wasn't wearing her headset, but the warehouse was quiet enough to pick up from someone else's. "What else would we be doing?" She turned to the L-man. "What do we need to do?"

"Not much. Roxanne, there are a couple dozen safety pins and locks all over this bird. They're easy to spot; just look for the long yellow ribbons. Pull the pins, turn the latches, whatever, then stow the ribbons in a drawer in the office. Don't leave them on the floor; we can't risk letting them get pulled into the intakes while we're squeezing through the door." The Man in Black pointed to a large-diameter pipe coming through the dividing wall, ending in a big coiled hose on the floor. "You two, that's a fuel line. This warehouse has its own filling station for the trucks, but one of the underground tanks is full of JP4 with a pinch of cesium instead of diesel. Fill 'er up. It'll take a while; it's got a big tank." He touched a spot on the rear of the fuselage, and a ramp swung down at the tail, revealing a space hardly bigger inside than the van, but with the seat backs against the outside walls. "Caitlin, come with me to the cockpit, and we'll do a systems check. I might try to teach you to program the autopilot. Mind the ceiling, it's low."

They scattered to their jobs. Eddie grabbed the end of the heavy hose, twisting as he pulled to uncoil it, and dragged it towards the plane. "Sheez. 'Fill the assault transport with jet fuel, boys. Roxy, go pull the pins on the missiles. Kat, get the electronic countermeasures ready.' Anna standing guard outside with a grenade launcher and an antitank gun and a whole new bag. Who'd have seen _this_ coming a month ago?"

"Yeah. I wonder what's coming at us next month." Bobby was searching under the plane. "Where's the fricking gas door on this thing?"

He pointed towards a spot on the fuselage in front of the folded wing. A large arrow, outlined in dark gray, pointed to a gray-outlined circle marked 'FUEL'. "That could be a clue."

Bobby reached up and futzed around with the door until he figured out how it opened. Together, they wrestled the end of the hose up to the opening and attached it. Bobby turned a valve, and the hose stiffened as fuel flowed into the tank. "How are we supposed to know when it's full?"

Their headsets clicked._ "I read fuel incoming. Quick work, for amateurs. Should take about ten minutes to fill. I'll let you know when to shut it off. But stay close to the line, just in case."_

"Okay." Bobby lifted his head. "Hear that?"

He listened. "All I hear is the hose gurgling." He stepped away and heard it. The wind outside was picking up. Nothing big, just a steady breeze strong enough to vibrate a couple loose building panels, but the air had been dead calm when they'd arrived. "Dang. Sarah gottum heap big medicine. How big's it gonna get?"

"I don't know. She says if she doesn't keep it under control, it'll get as big as a hurricane, and never die out."

Rox stepped into sight at the nose of the plane, a fistful of yellow ribbons doubled up in her hand like a weird bouquet. She stared up at another one hanging from an antenna maybe ten feet up. She reached, and her feet came gently off the concrete. She rose, not so much floating as lifting on invisible wings. She bent one knee and pointed her toes, reminding him of a sprite from a fairy tale, and fiddled with the ribbon, completely absorbed and unself-conscious.

"Bro. Why don't you tell her?"

He watched her blow a strand of purple hair off her cheek, her hands busy. "Cuz, with a chick like her, it would be the same as my name on the dotted line. I'm not ready for that, dude. And I don't think I'm really what she's looking for." _And maybe Kat's right, and she deserves better._

"The dreaded 'C' word, eh?"

He got a little warm at that. "Bet your ass. I've seen what it takes to keep an open-ended promise. My parents adopted a little Asian kid from God knows where and swore he'd never lack a thing. They did it, but for the life of me I don't see how. It took more patience and understanding and care than I'll ever have. It doesn't seem like there were enough hours in the day. What about you, O rootless one?" He jerked his head towards the cockpit. "There's another one ready to give his kid everything. You always talk about how rough it was not having anyone who gave a rat about you. Big chance, right there. Gonna do something with it?" He saw Bobby flush, and felt the air temp rise. "Hey! Not around the _jet fuel_, okay?"

Bobby chuckled, and the air cooled. He shook his head, and offered a hand, and Eddie clasped it: no hand jive, just two brothers hanging on to each other for a space. "What a pair of losers. Both of us scared to reach for the prize."

"_Looks good. Shut it off and stow it. Be sure to secure the fuel door."_

Kat made an appearance while they were coiling the hose. He paused to admire her in her Warrior Woman outfit. The camo pants and long-sleeved tee didn't really hide her figure; in fact, the half-zipped vest sort of worked like a bustier, and made her assets stand out. It didn't stop him from wishing he'd gotten a peek at her in the Spandex. She had her hair pulled back in a short tail, the way she used to wear it at the Academy before she changed, and he flashed on her face in glasses, which he'd always thought were kind of cute. "Need a hand, guys?"

"Neh. Nearly done."

Bobby nodded agreement. "Done up there?"

"Uh huh. Preflight was simple. Having two people in there just made it more convenient. I think he just wanted to show it off. The cockpit is crazy automated, and the autopilot is almost AI smart. I'll bet if we knew enough, we could get it to fly the plane from takeoff to landing." She pulled her glass case from a leg pocket and slipped the amber lenses on.

"Speaking of scary clever machines." He glanced out the door. "You're our computer expert, Red. What's going on with her? It's hard to believe she can be so convincing, even if she _has_ been building a repertoire of mannerisms for two years. You said it was another personality. Did you mean it?"

"Yes." Kat glanced out the door too. "That's not Anna. It's a stranger."

Bobby lifted his eyebrows. "Split personality, really?"

She shook her head. "No. Split personalities are fractional, hence the name. Dixie is too complete and self-contained. It's more like an alternate personality, someone Anna might have been with a different environment and upbringing."

_Anna with a different environment and upbringing._

_She's not unique, we know that now._

"_Just pretend I walked out the door and someone who looks like me walked in."_

_What if that's exactly what happened?_

They'd driven by this section of the building, but he might have been looking the wrong way when they passed an outside door into the office. Or it might be hidden. Suddenly, getting a look inside that little office seemed the most important thing in the world.

"Hey, bro. Where-"

"Be right back."

The door was six-panel wood, painted and windowless. He reached for the tarnished brass knob and saw that it was an inch ajar. Almost afraid of what he would see, he eased it open.

He'd nearly convinced himself he'd be looking into a bare room with a door leading outside. What he saw drove all thoughts of Anna and her doppelganger from his mind.

Just as he poked his head in, he saw Rox slide her arms gently around John Lynch, and tip her head up, smiling.


	4. Driving Lessons

Roxanne opened the office door with one hand, a wad of ribbons in the other, and looked around. The place was kind of dusty, but not trashed. The office looked as if the previous occupants had vacated simply by walking away: a big wooden desk sat under the painted-over window, and three filing cabinets lined one wall. A Star Trek wall calendar from nineteen sixty-six was tacked to the other. "Gawd," she said to herself. "My mom wasn't even born yet."

"Talking to yourself's a bad habit, Roxanne."

She started before she recognized the voice. "Not as bad as talking to people who aren't there, Mr. Lynch." She opened a file cabinet drawer, stuffed the ribbons in, and shut it with a thump. "Did you come in to check up on me?"

"No. I came for Anna's duffel." He indicated the almost-empty bag on the floor near the desk. "I didn't mean to startle you. You'd think the hinges would creak, at least." He smiled down at her. "At least this time you've got all your clothes on." He stepped past to retrieve the bag.

"Hey," she said softly. "Turn around."

He turned, eyebrows raised in question, then stiffened as she slipped her hands between his ribs and his arms, circling him. She smiled up at him, then pressed the side of her face against his chest and inhaled, catching a noseful of his aftershave. She closed her eyes and squeezed him twice, hard. "Come _on_. You know what to do. Do I have to strip and turn the lights out?" She felt his arms spread over her like a blanket.

Smiling, she opened her eyes. Grunge was staring round-eyed at them from the open doorway, four feet away. She locked eyes with him. "Don't. Say. A word." Then she added, "Out." When the door closed, she shut her eyes again.

"The geometry's a little different," she said after a moment. "Your parts aren't in the same places. I've grown a couple inches, up and out. But it feels just the same." His hand found the back of her head finally.

She swayed gently in his arms, almost dancing with him. "You know, you're the closest thing to a father I've ever had."

His fingers combed through her hair. "And you're the closest I'll ever get to a second chance. Unless one of you girls brings a baby home."

She tilted her head up. "You'd let me do that?"

"_Let_ you?" He smiled down at her. _Was there really a time when I thought he was hard on the eyes?_

"You know what I mean. What if I wouldn't tell you who the father was? What if I _couldn't_?"

He shrugged gently. "As long as it was consensual, it wouldn't matter. No child of yours will lack for love in _my_ house." The smile turned into a grin, but not a nice one. "Course, that doesn't mean I wouldn't hunt him down."

"Why?"

"To make damn sure it was consensual, and ask him some pointed questions about his feelings for you."

She tucked her head back into his chest. "Insert smart comment about fatherhood… here."

-0-

"Way-al, willya lookit that."

Lynch inhaled a last scent of the child's hair before he released her. She let go as well, and turned to the door. Dixie stood just inside, grinning. "Towhead's not young enough for ya anymore, Jock? Gotta go cradle robbin?"

"It's a tiny little office with nothing in it," Roxanne said, as if to herself. "You'd think it was a frickin bus station or something."

Dixie looked at Roxanne through lowered lashes. "Don't worry, punkin. Yer boyfriend dun need to know, or the little towhead either." She gave him a look glinting with mischief. "And we prolly should keep yer sister in the dark too, dontcha think? Just borry me another cigarette, an' my lips are sealed."

The girl reached into a vest pocket and drew out a pack. Instead of passing it over, she crushed it in her hand and dropped it to the floor. "Fresh out. Sorry."

She stepped towards the door, but Dixie's arm shot out, blocking the way. "Sass me all you want, punkin. But this here's a flight deck. Don't leave your trash on the floor." When Roxanne stared at her, she frowned. "What, you think somebody round here's gonna clean up after you? Bend down and pick it up."

Without breaking eye contact, Roxy held her hand out at waist height over the litter, palm down. The pack sprang from the floor and smacked into her palm. "Has anyone ever told you you're a depraved bitch?"

Dixie's eyes went flat. "Only relatives, friends, and acquaintances. My enemies don' say nothin atall."

Roxanne left without another word, slamming the door behind her. Dixie wiped at her eye, mouth twisted up into a smile. "Oh, I _like_ her. She don' take crap off _nobody_."

"The feeling isn't mutual." He picked up the duffel again.

"Don't I know it. And where we're goin, I 'spect others'll notice too. Girl's not one to bottle up her feelins."

He got it then. "You're deliberately provoking those kids. You _want_ them to dislike you."

She gave a head shrug. "Cain't help lookin like her, Jock. Tha's why we worked it into the story. But anybody who watched the mall video saw how chummy she is with those girls. If witnesses see em treatin me like a buzzin rattler, it'll help convince em I'm a different person, resemblance or no. And once they accept there's two of us, they'll be ready to believe there's a hunnert, or a thousand." The mischief returned to her eyes. "What about _you_, dark and silent? Whaddaya think of me?"

"I think there's more than one reason why you don't stay with a man for more than a night."

"Ayuh, but _what_ a night." She stepped closer. "Got to admit, I'm a little curious bout you. How bout it, Jock? Door doesn't lock, but I hear you're the adventurous type. Want to see how I stack up against the towhead?"

"Hardly."

She closed within arm's length and looked slyly up, eyes almost closed, lips parted. "Sure you don't wanna give her a message? I'll see she gets it."

He swung the bag between them. "Very appropriate quote. _The Exorcist_, I believe?"

She chuckled and took the bag by its strap. "Told her you wun go for it. But she was so damn worried you might like me better, I had to see for m'self. She'll turn handsprings when I tell her."

Half an hour later, everyone was aboard and the bird was buttoned up. They'd all walked the hangar, picking up discarded packaging and other litter, and the space was as clean as they could reasonably get it. The kids were belted into their seats in the payload bay aft, and he and Dixie sat side by side in the cramped cockpit.

Dixie fiddled with her headset. "Which of us is gonna take 'er out?"

He started the engines and listened to them wind up in idle. Even in the bare echoing hangar, the sound was low enough for conversation. "I'm in the pilot's seat."

"Ever fly it?"

"No. But I've flown Harriers." He adjusted the fan pitch to bite a little air. Dust swirled up around the bird, obscuring vision. He waited, hoping enough of it would blow out the door for decent visibility.

"Lift system's not the same. Takeoff characteristics are gonna be more like the F-35. Sure you can afford to learn from your mistakes right now, Jock?"

The dust was thinning. He looked at her. "You haven't flown it either."

"I've flown the Thirty-Five in simulation."

Except for a thin film on the windows, the dust was gone. He wondered if an observer would mistake the thin cloud billowing out the door for a fire. Along the back wall, the sheet metal panels nearest the plane vibrated with the torrential air flux. One popped loose at the bottom and flapped. _Time to go._

He advanced the throttles and made cautious adjustments to the duct and fan controls. The bird rose on its long rough-terrain jacks and finally lifted off the concrete. It immediately drifted sideways to the left, almost brushing the wall before he corrected it.

"Outta trim, Jock. Not enough to matter in normal flight, but it does while we're in here playin air hockey."

He switched on his mike. "Caitlin, we need to shift some weight to the right side of the plane."

"_How much?_"

"Balance it out, if we're not already." He eyed his diminutive copilot sitting in the right-hand seat. "If we are, transfer a hundred pounds."

The plane began drifting right, and he cancelled his correction.

"_Done._"

"Okay. Sit tight until we're out of the hangar." He fed more power to the fans and choked down the ducts; he could change blade pitch and duct adjustments faster than he could wind up the turbines, and he wanted plenty of power available for a panic maneuver. He twisted the armrest-mounted stick in his left hand and the vehicle turned ponderously towards the exit as it rose.

"Flare," she said, reminding him of the extra lift aircraft acquired near the ground from compressed air underneath them. "Ceiling's not too high. Door's lower."

He choked the fans down still further as the plane waddled towards the door. The vehicle shuddered with repressed power, and the noise level rose. _Fuel must be going through the lines like a fire hose._ A building panel tore loose, skittered to the edge of the dock, and disappeared.

He lined up the nose with the opening and let the engines howl while he looked out into the empty field, considering his exit strategy. The dock outside was narrower than the plane's length. If he went over the edge with too little lift, he'd bury the nose before the tail cleared the dock; too much, and they'd hit the top of the door before they got out. Then he looked at the crane ironwork, waiting just outside the door like a cat at a mouse hole.

"Door ain't gettin any bigger, Jock. Mebbe if we horse around a little longer, the back wall might blow out." When he glared at her, she crossed her arms and stared out the windshield. "Shuttin up, right now."

He studied his copilot. He looked at the delicate hands, the fingers curled around her upper arms. He knew how sensitive those fingers were. And he remembered that first night, when she – Anna, rather – had shown her superior skill handling the crane. He almost asked if her "simulator" experience was a skillset. Instead, he cut the power down to high idle. The engine noise softened to a whine, and the bird settled on its jacks. ""Care to give it a try?"

With her arms still folded, she turned her head and raised an eyebrow. "Sure we won't be bruisin any fragile male egos?"

"There's at lot more at stake here than my pride. Dammit, I _have_ to be able to fly this thing. You've got to be on the ground at the LZ, or the whole plan falls apart." He flipped the switch that transferred control to the right-hand seat.

"Wun worry bout that." She adjusted the fan and duct controls, and the bird lifted without additional power, no louder than a hair dryer. "You ain't gonna hafta fly _into_ a hangar. Once we're in the blue, and you get a chance to mess around with it, it'll all come back."

She touched the control that raised the landing gear, and it seated into the fuselage with a soft thump. Suddenly the cabin was even quieter, and the aircraft rose slightly. She grasped the stick in her right hand; the left danced over the fan and duct controls as if she were typing or playing piano. The plane pirouetted daintily on its center of mass and fled down the hangar at a trot. She made another quick elaborate change, and the plane turned without changing course, sliding sideways down the length of the hangar, the metal wall just a couple feet from the nose. Dixie turned to him, grinning. "Yehaw."

He looked at her sourly. "Simulation, eh?"

"I learned a lot watchin you, Jock. What you did wrong as much as right." She twisted the stick again, and they were traveling backwards, still at a trot. He looked at the hangar door, gauging distance, and knew the end wall behind them was very near. The engine pitch increased slightly, the seat pressed against him, and the plane stopped and reversed direction as if snatched back by a bungee cord. "Aright. Lessee how deep the cushion is."

The plane sprang into the air, almost brushing the ceiling, then freefell scarily until the air cushion caught it a yard from the floor.

His headphone clicked. "_Hey._" Bobby's voice, indignant. "_What's going on up there?_"

"Hey," Dixie shot back, "what happint ta radio discipline? Where's your team leader?"

"_She hasn't got a hand free to switch on her mike. She's spread out like a starfish, waiting for the crash._"

"Ah. Well, yer old man's teachin me to drive, stud." The plane slalomed down the hangar towards the doorway.

"_Well, you might remember there aren't any windows back here. Or barf bags._"

"A mixed blessin, for sure. Doan you worry, blue eyes. We got one big bump comin, then things'll smooth right out." Slowly, she took it through the doorway and brought it to a halt with the nose almost to the edge of the dock. "Hold onto somethin back there. This is gonna be a little bit like a carrier launch."

She adjusted the throttle and lift controls. "Be nice to top off the tanks; we burned plenty in here. But somebody's got to be on the other side a that wall by now, wonderin what the hayull's goin on." The engines wound up to a howl. Suddenly the straps bit into his shoulders as the beast leaped _backwards_ through the door towards the divider wall. When he was sure the tail was about to smack the blocks, the jets roared, the seat pushed hard into his back and they were hurtling towards the sunlit opening. The concrete disappeared, and the bird dipped a few feet and bounced on its cushion, and then stabilized six feet above the whipping weeds, still accelerating.

Dust and trash whirled around them, and bars of light and shadow flickered on the windshield as they moved out from under the scaffolding, then they were in the open. Dixie grinned at him. "Woulda been a bad time for that sucker to fall, wunnit?" Brown fields and junk lay in front of them. He watched the wings unfold, rotating and swinging forward and out. The nose came up and they climbed steeply, even when she banked hard to the right and circled back over the warehouse. She banked left, pointing his window at the ground. "Lookit."

The brush under the scaffolding was ablaze. Several police cars were just rounding the corner of the warehouse, lights flashing. Men were standing at the hangar door, looking out and up.

"Looks like we blew down the divider wall and set the field on fire. Not a bad start to our li'l hellraisin adventure, wouldja say?"

8


	5. Consulting the Oracle

Caitlin sat with her legs braced against the opposite seat long after the aircraft's flight had settled down. On the opposite bench, Roxanne pressed Eddie's head down between his knees. "Better?"

"Yeh. Dix got it wrong. She's gotta have some Wash in her." He looked up, surveying her sourly. "Thought you were the one with the weak stomach. You could at least look a little queasy, Red."

"Looking scared to death isn't enough? I guess there's a difference between motion sickness and getting ill at the sight of blood."

"Kat," Bobby wheezed beside her, "a little air here?"

Her arm was still thrown across his chest; she dropped it. "Sorry."

"Saright." His eyes were warm with sympathy. "Flashbacks?"

"A little, maybe." For fifteen minutes, they'd sat blind in the payload bay while Mr. Lynch and Dixie had put them through a dark coaster ride, banking and bouncing on a circuitous route to the coast. She supposed they were trying to minimize observation from the ground and the crowded sky, and make their destination hard to predict. It reminded her too much of another plane trip she'd taken, one that had ended with her hurtling down a mountainside, her plane a splash of flame and debris on the peak behind her.

Now Eddie and Roxy were looking at her, too. "Wouldn't be the same," Eddie said. "Worst case, Rox'll get us all down safe."

"Course, 'down' might put us in the Pacific somewhere."

The sliding door to the pilot's compartment slid aside, and Mr. Lynch looked in. "Everybody okay back here?"

"Peachy." Roxy rubbed Eddie's back, between the massive shoulders.

"Good. Caitlin, come forward. Dixie needs to talk to you." He stepped into the payload bay to let her pass by, and slid the door shut behind her.

Except for the lack of control sticks and wheels between the pilots' knees, the Dragon's cockpit was very much like the one in Mr. Lynch's old Gulfstream, the one she'd been ejected from at half the speed of sound. She'd swallowed her unease at the first sight of it while the plane was in the hangar; this time, she scarcely noticed. Dixie sat in the right-hand seat, fiddling with a keyboard-sized control pad, apparently paying no attention to the view from the windows, as the plane pierced cottony clouds and burst into sunlight time and again. "C'mon in, sugar," she said without looking up from her work. "I won't bite."

"I wasn't sure."

"Fft. Doan mind me. I allus get testy before a scrap, wanna pick fights with everbody. That an goin three days without a cigarette'll make a monster outta anybody."

"What are you doing? Programming the autopilot?"

"Ayuh. Settin up some macros an tyin em to the stick, make it a little more intuitive for an ol' chopper jockey like Jock. You might hafta put up with a little more bouncing around while he tries em out. What are you snickerin about?"

She dropped into the pilot's seat. The lack of a stick and the man-size footwell made the seat cozy rather than constricting; rather like he Charger's driver seat. "Sorry. I've never heard anyone say 'macro' or 'intuitive' like that."

"Typical Yankee prejudice."

"I'm from Washington State."

"Then ya should be doubly ashamed, thinking a person's stupid cuz they doan talk through their nose all th' time, or pay more attention to their consonants than their vowels." She pulled a legal-size envelope from a vest pocket. "For you. Jus' three pages. Don't leave it layin around after you're done reading it."

She glanced through it. It was a compact brief on the origins, organization, and mission of the fictional Genactive Resistance. "Shun recite all that to everone who cocks an ear, it'll sound rehearsed. Jes' read it a couple times till it sticks, an then if yer in a spot where it seems natural to mention my lil' social club to someone, stick to that, and don't add anything else. That's more than enough for ya to know, seein how we wun tell _you_ much either, till we're sure you're with us."

She glanced back towards the payload bay. "Why me?"

"One, cuz you're the team leader, so you might be expected to know more. Two, cuz, agin all preconceptions, you're developin a talent for deception. Doan take offense. I said talent, an I meant it. It's gonna serve us all well today, sugar." She pushed the keyboard aside. "There. Now our Dark Knight has a proper steed. He oughtta be able to lick anythin they send against us, short of a flight a Tomcats." She looked up. "Somethin on your mind?"

"Dixie… where is Anna, really?"

She cocked her head. "Din she say?"

"Stop it."

"Cain't." Compassion showed in the gray eyes. "I can see you're scared for her. Doan be. She ain't here, but she's not _gone_. You'll see her agin."

"No offense, but I'd feel better hearing it from her right now."

Dixie shook her head. "We shun be doin this. We really shun. But I will, jus this once." She gestured at herself. "I'm not a suit a clothes you can jes put on an take off, sugar. It's more like customizin a car. You know, big fender flares, spoilers, tweaked engine, custom paint? Not all the changes are bolt-on, carrot top. There's places where you gotta cut or add to make the new parts fit. Bringin a car like that back to original takes time and work."

"Are you going to do it?"

"Count on it."

"What happens to you afterwards?"

Dixie looked at her, silent.

"I'm sorry."

"Doan be. No survival instinct. My life's fulfilled when the job is done. The little towhead was here first, an that settles it." She leaned back in her seat. "Somethin else. What is it?"

She took three shallow breaths while Dixie waited. "How well do you know her?"

Dixie raised an eyebrow. "Some ways better'n you, I think. We doan have a shared mind, nothing like that. But, for a little while, while we're switchin drivers, we're both in the front seat fore she slides out from behind the wheel an gets out. Know what a 'handshake' is, computer geek?"

She nodded. "Two computers establishing a protocol for data transfer or joint action, usually to tackle a common task."

"Just so. Most ways, I'm a separate individual. I know her like a childhood friend I never lost touch with. Which happens to be jus' what the cover story says I am." Dixie tipped her chin down and looked at her through her lashes. "What sorta secrets you hopin I'll spill?"

"She really loves him. _Doesn't_ she?"

"She loves all a you, sugar. If you'll allow she knows what love is, an you can accept that 'love' is something a little different for someone with no glands or instincts. Lord knows she cares more about you than about me." She tilted her head. "Or… are you askin me somethin else?"

She looked out the windshield. "He's a good man. He deserves to be happy. She does that for him, in spades, but it would all turn to dust if he ever found out she was… performing a service."

Dixie scoffed. "Love never makes a lick a sense. 'S why I avoid it. She's happy when he is, unhappy when he's not. She wants to know him inside an out, and help him be the man he wants to be. Everything she has or kin lay hands on is his for the asking – or even if he dun ask. She thinks about him all the time, an wants to make him smile when he thinks of her. She wriggles like a puppy when he praises her. She'd die for him quicker'n you can snap your fingers. If that ain't love, what else does she need to do or be, sugar?" The eyebrow rose again. "Somethin _else_?"

"I don't know. I'm sure she's keeping secrets from me, but I don't know what questions to ask. Would you tell if I did?"

Dixie shrugged, making the tendrils at her temples wave. Caitlin looked carefully at the little blonde's hair: from so close, you'd think you could spot a wig, especially tied back, but it looked perfectly natural, the individual roots seeming to disappear into the scalp. "Depends. If she's keepin something from you that's truly hurtful an you doan need to know, prolly not. But I'm sure she and I are of two minds bout how much protection you need, an what you need to know. I like you, carrot top, but I ain't been wipin yer nose since you were sixteen. Dun matter to her that you can juggle bulldozers; lotsa times, she looks at you an sees a lost little girl."

She snorted. "I was twice her size when I met her."

"No nevermind." Dixie gave her a blank and chilling look. "Think we should table this for now. But I said we were gonna tangle before this mission is over, an I still think so, even if it's just playactin. And I think, before the dust settles, you'll be hearin things she'd rip her tongue out fore she told you."

-0-

Lynch watched Caitlin duck through the opening between compartments. One look at the girl's troubled face told him she and Dixie had talked about more than the cover story. "Everything okay?"

"Far from it. But everything's going according to plan. She wants you up there."

Dixie was leaning back in her seat, hands behind her head, looking out the window. "Thass some girl."

"Yes. They're all special."

"Somethin ever happens to the towhead, you two gonna end up… consolin each other."

"You're a coarse little bitch." He dropped into the pilot's seat, noting that it had been run all the way back.

"Jus' realistic. Way she feels bout you's an elephant in the livin room. Dun it complicate things?"

"A little. Less so, now that I'm definitely off the market."

She nodded. "Why din you hook up with her? Prolly coulda got her in your bed with one kiss."

His throat tightened. "Never happen. Not with…"

"Not with one a Alex Fairchild's girls, huh? What's the story, Jock? You know where he's at, maybe?"

"Anna didn't tell you?"

"Doan be clever, Jock. I doan think she knows."

"Will she, if I tell you?"

She cocked her head. "Dun have to. I'll keep your secret, you wanna tell somebody."

Five minutes later, she looked out the windshield. "Huh. Thass quite a load a guilt to carry. Doan seem right to blame yourself. He was a grown man, Jock. It was his decision."

"I know that. But I still owe him."

"An beddin his daughter would be crappy payback. I see it. Doan make no sense, but I see it." She turned back to him. "What about the little dye job? You two were lookin mighty friendly in the hangar."

He sad slowly, "You know what happened at the Project."

"Summut. Like to get my hands on the pricks who treated them like that."

"Yes." He stared at the control panel without seeing it. "She clung to me just like that in her cell. That's when I decided to take her with me, and raise her as my own, if I could."

"As a favor to Alex?"

"No. Before I knew she was his."

"Thass good. Cuz she's not his."

He turned to her. "What?"

"Her mama was a lil tramp. Alex and Stephen Callahan went on that training exercise at Fort Dix together, din they?"

He shook his head. "In rotation."

"Yeah, well, she did em both."

"She's Stephen's?"

"Ayuh. That change things for you?"

"No. Except… straightlaced Stephen seems to have been living a double life. I was plenty surprised to learn Sarah was his. I thought he was crazy about his wife. Now it sounds like he cheated on her every chance he got. But it doesn't change Roxanne in my eyes."

She nodded. "Good. The girls know, by the way, all but Roxanne. But not the boys."

"They still call each other 'Sis'."

She nodded. "Ayuh. They both call the Princess 'Sis,' too. One big happy sisterhood. Even the towhead's in the club now." She raised an eyebrow at him. "Y'know, she juss ast me a couple things about her lil' housekeeper, things she wun dare ask direct. She had the same look on her face you do now."

He looked hard at her, trying to look past the hard-edged mirth, past the gray eyes, trying to see the soul beneath the mask. "Is she in love with Frank?"

The humor faltered, replaced by mild puzzlement. "Well, sure." Then she looked closely at him and snorted. "Oh! Like that, eh?" She shook her head, smiling. "You ain't got her figured out? Girl's got some funny ideas bout love. She ain't got a… biological imperative to cling to one man an bear his kids. But you're the axle her wheel turns on, Jock. The more a man reminds her a you, the better she likes him, thass all. Not sayin she wun take another man to bed, but it wun be cuz she's lookin for somethin _you_ doan give her." She chucked a finger under his chin. "Less you send her away, she'll never leave you. An if the idea of sharin her favors with another man sticks in yer craw, a word to her is all it'd take to see it never happens."

She turned to the controls. "Change of subject. I tweaked the flight controls so you doan have so much to think about while you're flyin. Pull straight up on the stick, it'll kick in the belly jets, kind of a substitute collective control. Should be able to make this thing hop around like a flea on a hot griddle." She drummed her fingers on the armrest. "You know, this bird's really somethin. It's configured as a flyin APC, but it wun take much to rebuild it as a bomber, or even an air superiority fighter that'd be generations ahead of anything in the air."

He shook his head. "Too much proscribed tech. Airframe, avionics, engines, weapons. All of it. You could never put it into production."

"Boeing and Douglas and Dassault and Mikoyan-Gurevich doan have to know that." She cocked her head. "Think about what else you found in that warehouse. Software that'd crash or subvert computers all over the world, black out cities, launch missiles, reroute world finances." She tapped her head. "Hardware that would make present-generation computers as quaint as sliderules. You really think all that stuff was trash that IO stuck in the attic an forgot about? That there weren't people who'd pay big to keep it tucked away an outta sight?"

He shook his head again. "If IO was getting royalties on any of it, they'd still have current records of the research, and they'd know where it was kept. IO seems to have forgotten the place ever existed."

"Assumin they ever knew bout it."

He felt his brows gather. "How could they not?"

"Like you said, Jock. If they knew bout the stuff in that warehouse, they'd be makin money on it. Therefore they doan know, an prolly never did. How'd _you_ find out about it?"

Suspicion grew in his mind. "Miles. When I took the Director's job at Operations. He told me to keep it close, because it was classified to him and me, not even Ivana. He'd been diagnosed by then. I thought he was giving me some leverage in the coming power struggle."

"Likely he was. But he din tell you the whole story, I think. Where'd he get the resources for the research projects? IO's got plenny a coin, but they _do_ keep books. An he'd have to account for the researchers' time too, time stolen right out from under his girlfriend's nose. You ever think bout that?"

"No. Truth, I put it out of my mind until Miles got too sick to work. Miles thought Ivana and I could work as partners after his death. As far as I know, she's the only person he ever misjudged. I knew better, and I had no intention of fighting Ivana for the top slot. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life treading carefully and looking over my shoulder. Ivana got the Deputy Director slot at Administration, and I started to plan a clean break."

"One that involved using the proscribed tech to keep her from findin you."

He nodded. "Before I knew about Bobby and Project Genesis."

"Well. Mebbe it's time you gave that warehouse full a goodies some more thought. Cuz the simplest explanation is that your ole buddy Miles Craven was runnin a research lab completely separate from IO's. Same principles, likely, usin royalty money to pay the bills, completely under IO's radar."

"The same way IO uses theirs to keep Congress in the dark about what they do."

She grinned. "Never met Miles Craven. But by all accounts, he was a twisty sumbitch. Woulda tickled him to have a secret lil side business, usin the best a the best. Beatin IO at its own game. Thing is, there cain't be any ongoing projects. Nothing new went inta that warehouse for six years. But you can bet your ass that stuff's still generatin royalties, an that money's pilin up somewhere, enough to make _you_ look like a pauper, Jock. You should track it down."

"I've already got plenty of money."

"If you believe that, you're thinkin small. You got enough money to buy these kids free? All a them? Or build em a safe haven, when the whole damn world falls apart a few years from now?"

"You've been thinking about this a lot?"

She shook her head. "Not me. Yer girlfriend. She was scared to talk to you bout it, cuz the conversation might lead to Miles' _whole_ plan for keepin you an Ivana workin side by side without killin each other." She turned to him, smiling at his flush. "Ayuh. Miles Craven din misjudge Ivana, Jock. He misjudged _you_."


	6. Knock, Knock

The spysats were old, long past their projected service life, and many of them were no longer functional. But the survivors were far from obsolete. They had been built and launched by the US Navy at the tail end of the Cold War, a network of satellites in geostationary orbit over the oceans of the world. They were publicly described as weather observation platforms, devices built to track storms and give early warning to shipping and coastal areas. Their real purpose had been to track Soviet naval units, especially the ballistic nuclear subs sent to prowl America's coasts, peering through hundreds of feet of water to locate the huge silent vessels as they ran their patrol circuits. When the dissolution of the Evil Empire had brought most of the Soviet fleet home to rot at its docks, the Weather Eye program's cover had become its true purpose. The satellites had acquired new handlers and updated software. But their job was essentially unchanged: to spot trouble brewing off the US coast, and alert their downlink before said trouble approached US soil.

One of the surviving satellites, stationed above the equator at one hundred thirty degrees longitude, detected a threat below. For the first time since it had ceased to be Navy property, it sent a priority-alert message to its receiving station.

NOAA Orbital Telemetry Station  
San Diego

"Son of a bitch."

Doug Udall was reading a report on climate changes in Europe when he heard a soft exclamation from Minori Yoshizawa, his shift partner. He looked over the top of the paper at her, staring at her flatscreen display. "Now what?"

"I think we've been hacked. Look at this." He got up and looked over her shoulder. Doug could tell at a glance that the feed was from one of the remaining Weather Eye birds; old and ill-adapted as they were to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency's network, they still produced the best imagery of any satellites in NOAA's orbital toolkit.

Then he noticed the ID tag in the corner of the image. "That can't be right. This looks like feed from Eleven." Weather Eye Eleven orbited just east of the mouth of the Amazon, and could track hurricanes from their formation off the coast of Africa to their landfalls in the Caribbean and eastern US. But the tag showed the feed to be coming from the Weather Eye tasked to watch Hawaii and the West Coast. And the feed was showing a hurricane off the coast of San Diego, as out of place as a horse in church.

"Like I said. We've been hacked."

"Well, first things first. Which sat is this feed really coming from? Cuz, wherever it really is, that looks like a nasty little storm."

Minori shook her head. "They didn't switch IDs. The other sats show normal imagery; they haven't been tampered with. Just Eleven. They're feeding this image into it somehow. Shit. I thought the firewall on these things was milspec."

"It is." He studied the scale at the bottom of the screen. "But it's thirty-year-old milspec. It was just a matter of time before some geek with time on his hands found his way into it. Just be thankful he knows zip about hurricanes. I bet he thought we'd fall for this."

"Oh, yeah. NOAA tells the National Weather Service to issue a hurricane alert for California. We'd be the laughingstock of the weather world." Hurricanes in the eastern Pacific formed off the coast of central Mexico, and almost always were blown by prevailing winds westward or north-westward. Any hurricane that wandered far enough off its normal course to approach the California coast crashed headlong into the California Current, a moat of cold water upwelling from the bottom of the Pacific that sucked the life out of any tropical storm that passed over it. No storm strong enough to be called a hurricane had made landfall in California since record keeping had begun, over a hundred and fifty years before.

Doug nodded. "It's not even a very realistic fake." He touched the scale with his finger, then the storm's image. "It's too small and dense for a real hurricane, and spinning way too fast. If it was real, it'd be producing winds over a hundred miles an hour. Where the hell would it get the energy?" He pulled up a chair next to Minori. "Run it back in time till it first appears. Bet it just pops onto the screen fully formed."

Minori called up the imagery from half an hour previous. All it showed was ocean seen through clear sky. Doug smiled at her. "Uh huh."

"We're still focused on the same spot. Maybe it moved a little." The scale increased as the camera zoomed out, but the view was unchanged. "Let me run it forward some." She advanced the image five minutes; no change. She advanced it another five. "Aha."

The image wasn't a storm yet, just a herd of cottony clouds in a loose spiral pattern. Doug blinked. "I'm surprised. I didn't think he'd bother. Still, it's forming way too fast, and too close to shore."

"Global warming," Minori said, smiling, and Doug snorted. Global warming was real, and producing real climate changes, but it had become a catchall for every half-educated crank with a theory.

Minori advanced the image another five minutes, and they both grinned at the resulting image. In five minutes' time, it had fully formed. In meteorological terms, it had appeared out of nowhere fifteen minutes ago.

Then Minori frowned and touched the lower edge of the screen. "What's this?" She zoomed the image out even further. They looked at the screen, grinned some more, and shook their heads.

The enlarged view showed a second storm twenty miles south of the first, practically touching in meteorological terms. Impossible as that was, their practical joker wasn't done yet. While the northern storm was turning in the usual counterclockwise pattern, the southern one was turning clockwise. At first, he thought they were mirror images, but closer examination showed them to be distinct individuals, albeit with the same impossible characteristics. "Is he jacking feed from Australia, do you think?"

"Can't say, but I bet it's all CGI. Look, they're pulling at each other. Looks like a Hubble photo of colliding galaxies."

"Yeah. Looks like they're going to merge." He shook his head. "I'd be shitting my pants if I thought this was real. They combine, it'd produce winds over two hundred miles an hour, I bet."

"Like you said, good thing he doesn't know hurricanes. He's too clever by half. When they find out who did this, he's gonna get job offers from every software outfit on Earth."

"When he gets out of prison, you mean."

"Yeah. When he gets out."

"So _that's_ what it looks like. Jesus."

They both turned to see Howard, the air-traffic guy, staring at the screen. Doug's skin prickled. "What _what_ looks like?"

Howard gestured at the screen. "Inbound Air Japan flight reported it fifteen minutes ago. San Diego's shutting down, diverting all flights to LAX. Even the flyboys at Coronado took one look at it and grounded all their birds, and I mean _now_. How come you didn't issue an alert? Isn't it moving?"

Without a word, Minori switched to realtime imaging. In five minutes' time, the storms had closed and grown until their dense and well-defined edges were touching. "Shit. It's fucking _real_?"

Doug tore his eyes from the screen, feeling sick. "I'll issue an alert, for all the good it'll do." Two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds would cause billions in property damage; with so little warning, they'd probably kill people, too. "We got all this on the record, right?"

Minori nodded, transfixed by the image on the screen. "Suppose it'll come in handy at the hearing." She jerked forward in her seat. "JESUS!"

Doug's eyes were yanked back to the screen. The storms were shrinking visibly, _unwinding_, their spin increasing dramatically as they collapsed. Several images flashed through his mind: a spinning figure skater drawing in her arms and legs, turning blurry with speed; a pitcher letting loose a fastball; a catapult launching a projectile. In barely a minute, the two storms had transformed into a river of heavy cloud rushing eastward towards the coast at jetliner speed.

"Five hundred miles an hour," Minori said softly. "Forget the alert, Doug. They'll never get a chance to read it."

"God help us all." The blast of wind alone would destroy everything in its path. Every tree it touched would be uprooted and flung into the sky; cars, too. Hell, the aircraft carriers at Coronado would probably be tossed onto the shore. Quakeproof buildings would be smashed and the debris thrown all the way to the mountains. No one caught above ground would live through it. The earth would be scoured clean.

Howard calmly said, "Ground telemetry. What's it show?" he reached past them and tapped keys; strings of numbers replaced the awful image. "Nothing."

"Destroyed," Minori said in a shocky voice.

"No. I mean, they show light winds and overcast. Not even rain. Barometer's dropping like a stone, though." He looked at them. "When you look at clouds from twenty thousand miles up all the time, it's easy to forget they don't all sit on the ground, I guess. This one looks to be at least half a mile up yet. Maybe we'll get lucky."

-0-

"Hold tight, kiddies," Dixie's voice called over the intercom. "We're goin in. Care for a little music, put us in the mood?"

"Please, God, not Wagner," Bobby heard his father say, just as an electric guitar solo banged out of the speakers: a long descending riff that became the backbone of the tune as the other instruments joined in. It perfectly matched the plane's movement; it felt as though they'd just topped the first hill of the meanest roller coaster in the world.

He reached for a handhold, but he needn't have bothered; once again, Kat's arm was a steel bar across his torso, and those superlong legs were stretched all the way across the aisle, bracing them both. "What _is_ this?"

"The gust front of Sarah's storm just passed by, and Dixie dropped us into the stream of air behind it," his dad said. "We won't be in the air much longer."

"I hope you mean we'll be landing soon," Kat said through her teeth.

Bobby smiled. "No. I was asking about the music."

"Oh. _Pipeline_, by The Surfaris, I think. Someone's been into my old vinyl." He huffed. "At least it beats _Ride of the Valkyries_."

-0-

"Huh." Howard pointed to several data sets on the screen, readings from telemetry stations around the greater San Diego area. "The storm's not the end of the weirdness. I have absolutely no explanation for these baro readings. We have a narrow trough of low pressure between the storm and Chula Vista, and a circle of high pressure around it. The storm's squirting down the low-pressure zone like a chute. What happens when it hits this wall of high pressure, I can't say."

"But… Where did it get the energy?" Doug asked again, feeling shocky.

"I'm looking at water temp readings," Minori said. "Don't ask me how or why, but the California Current's not there anymore. Water temp is up _eleven degrees_."

"Well, this should generate a hell of a study." Howard scratched his ear. "You know, we're gonna have to come up with a name for this."

Doug said, "Well, don't name it after me."

"Or me," Minori chimed in. "Got a feeling it would be bad for my career. Specially if it touches down."

"Oh, it's gonna touch down," Howard said confidently.

Chula Vista

Colby watched the Keeper team as they bustled around the warehouse, making their preparations to trap Lynch and any Gens he might bring with him. Being bound hand and foot to a wheelchair limited his view, but he could still see plenty of activity; Ivana had sent an army. "What are they doing there?"

"Where?" Ivery stood a step away, studying his PDA.

"Those things they're putting on the walls." The warehouse was a modern industrial structure; the outside walls were constructed of metal panels attached to steel posts and girders, resting on a concrete footer that extended up into a four-foot wall around the building's perimeter. A tech crew was installing shoebox-sized objects about eight feet up on the walls, spaced ten feet apart.

Ivery didn't look up. "Neural jammers, like the collars. Much more powerful, though. They don't need to be half a meter from the subject's brain to work. They're networked. When we switch them on, they should render anyone who enters the building harmless."

"Anyone? The collars work on non-Gens, too."

"Yes. Even more powerfully." He stuck a finger into his shirt collar and showed him a plain silver band about half an inch wide around his neck. "Cancels the effect. It seemed a surer method than, say, pumping the building full of gas."

He gave Ivery a flat stare. "I'm not wearing one of those. Am I?"

Ivery shook his head, twice. "No. Ivana's orders. We take no chances with you, show you no trust, until your story proves out. Sorry." The Director of Research paused. "For what it's worth, I believe you."

Colby flexed his hands. That, and moving his head, were the only freedom left to him. "Doesn't seem to be worth much."

"She's had men killed out of hand on less suspicion, Frank." He gestured to the restraints. "That's a measure of how much she values you as an ally, and fears you as an enemy."

"Bullshit, Ben. She's keeping me alive because the stakes are too high to throw me away if I can be any use, that's all. If I don't make useful bait, she thinks, I might still be a bargaining chip."

"I disagree. She wants to believe you, Frank. But she's not a trusting person. I really hope we net Lynch and his Twelve-Five, at least. That would be enough to put you in solid with her." His PDA chimed. "They're about to test the neutralizer system. Brace yourself."

"What-"

The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of confusing and contradictory images. He was sitting, standing, walking across the floor; he was _watching_ himself walk across the floor. Ivery was beside him; no, Lynch was. He almost shouted a warning before the man disappeared, replaced by Anna, then Ivana. The lighting dimmed, brightened, changed color. The place smelled of pine, sewage, hot copper. The floor tilted and dipped, as if in motion. Strange sounds roared around him, yet he couldn't hear a thing. He yanked at his restraints, trying to find a sensation he knew was real; but his hands were already free. Well, two of them were, anyway; the others were bound behind his back, in his lap, waving over his head, gliding over smooth flesh. He felt himself coming apart in a centrifuge of contrasting sensation, flying off in all directions, dissipating. He wondered if he was screaming.

He came back to himself. Ivery was standing in front of him in the nearly empty warehouse, staring at him in fascination. "What was _that_ like?"

His heart was pounding hard enough to feel in his shoulders. He felt his clothes plastered to him in the cool air, and knew he was drenched in sweat. He tested his bonds, more to count his limbs than anything else. "You should take the collar off and try it." His voice shook as he said it.

"No, thank you. It looked _most_ unpleasant."

_Dear God. I couldn't have crawled. Even a Gen who comes in here will be stumbling blindly into walls. They'll be as easy to round up as newborn kittens. Love of God, Top, do the prudent thing and don't come for me._

-0-

Five minutes after the stormjet fired itself at the California coast, it passed over the United States Naval Radio Station at the extreme south end of San Diego Bay. Still so high that its chief effect was to turn the afternoon sky pitch black, it rushed towards the corral of high pressure surrounding its target, six miles inland. Forty seconds later, it slammed into the air curtain like an antitank round into armor plate. Most of it, diverted by the barrier, swirled around the perimeter as a picket of heavy rain and high winds. But a portion of the jet forced its way through, slowed like a dragster popping its chute, dropped three thousand feet, and touched down on the warehouse complex with the accuracy of a cruise missile.

-0-

Colby noticed a sudden change in his hearing, and recognized it for a pressure drop, a big one. He worked his jaw until his ears popped. When they did, he could hear the wind whistling around the building. _Too quick._

Ivery frowned and shook his head, hard, not realizing why his hearing had gone wonky. He addressed a nearby Keeper. "What's happening?"

"Sounds like a storm," the black-clad man said. He slipped his visor down over his face, making his voice echo. "Not a biggie. Wind and rain won't mess up the equipment, and we've worked in crappy weather before. Let's just hope they don't have any trouble getting here." The man turned to Colby. "How about it? Will they call the game on account of rain?"

Colby looked up into the trooper's faceplate, wishing he could see if the man's face was as smug and confident as his voice, but all he could see was a fisheye reflection of his own bound form. _You fucking idiots. Don't you Gen experts see what's going on?_ He corrected himself: these men were highly trained, and well briefed on the Gens they were up against. But all their training was geared toward hunting and capture, not combat; their mindset only allowed for a Gen to fight when cornered. "They'll be here. But not before the storm gets worse."

"Nothing like this in the forecast," another trooper said. "Light overcast, no chance of rain."

Suspicion dawned on Ivery's face. Then he looked at Colby, and his eyes and mouth grew round, just as the building boomed like a drum and the wind noise rose to a howl. "They're coming." Then, louder: "_They're coming!_"

"News flash, Einstein," Colby said. "They're _here_."

The two troopers sprinted for the door, unslinging their weapons.

The warehouse walls quivered, and suddenly peeled off and fluttered away like a house of cards in a stiff wind, the thirty-foot panels disappearing up into the roaring black sky. The wind slapped Colby over, knocking the chair on its side. Ivery's feet went out from under him, and he flattened spread-eagled, fingers vainly digging into the concrete. His mouth was wide open, but Colby couldn't hear him from six feet away.

A Keeper tumbled by, his weapon freeing itself from his grasp and skidding across the floor. He came to a stop and got on his hands and knees. He attempted a crouch, but the instant he rose above the shelter of the four-foot sidewall, the wind smashed him off his feet, sending him flying away again.

Ivery belly-crawled to his wheelchair. When their faces were six inches apart, he shouted, "Frank! If you know what's going on here-"

"Warned you," he shouted back. "Warned you all. They're learning to fight. Not just resist. _Fight._" He bent closer. "Get close to the wall!"

Ivery took his advice, crawling past him towards the wall of the building about ten yards away; Colby was more than a little surprised when the man hooked a toe in the wheelchair tubing, dragging him laboriously along.

As he was pulled backwards a foot at a time towards the wall, he watched the Keepers trying to regroup from the initial shock of the Gens' attack. Several of them were using their equipment belts to lash themselves to whatever stationary objects they could find. A few had found real cover, and most had hung on to their weapons. The loss of surprise and most of their preparations had rocked them but not broken them; they were preparing to fight.

Something stung his ear; at the same time, a loud hissing joined the howling of the wind, and he felt Ivery falter. Then he was pulled hard for several feet, and came to rest against the wall, still lying on his side with Ivery next to him, panting. He looked up.

Shotgun blasts of hailstones were shooting over the wall, their trajectories almost horizontal, gleaming like tracer rounds. He guessed they were about half-inchers. _Or maybe, the way they're coming in, I should say fifty-cal._ He watched them mow down the exposed troopers. The marble-sized pellets didn't penetrate body armor, but they struck with hammerblow force, and there were thousands of them, _millions_. When they struck something hard enough, they burst into clouds of icy granules sharp enough to cut. Men grunted and cried out as the projectiles struck gloved hands and other unarmored flesh. One man's visor starred and disappeared, turning his face into a bloody mask as he fell. Even uninjured men lost their footing on the hailstones and went down, beaten into the concrete by the wind and relentless pounding of the icy bullets. Colby could no longer see a single man on his feet.

A wall of rain almost as heavy as a wave crashed over the retaining wall and inundated them. He breathed shallowly through his mouth for fear of drowning. The hurricane wind drove the water droplets into the skin like needles. He felt certain that the Keepers in and around the building had no thought but seeking shelter by now. The only men he could see were prone, still, broken.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it began. The wind slackened, gusted, and settled down to a steady but gentle breeze. The sky overhead was still dark and roiling, but aloof now, waiting. They were lying in four or six inches of water. The men lying facedown on the concrete had their faces in it, and they rose, spluttering and retching and clutching themselves. One man lifted his visor to let water pour out. It was the same one who'd asked Colby about calling the game on account of rain.

Ivery was shouting at him, but his ears were ringing so loudly he could barely make out the words. "Is it over? What now?"

_No, I don't suppose it's over. First, the artillery barrage; close after, the ground assault. _"They knocked on the door pretty hard, Ben. I think they want to come in."

The sky overhead roared again. His first thought was that the storm was returning; his second, that the Callahan girl was nearby and tossing lightning bolts. Then the pools of water nearby leaped into the sky, pushed by a sudden hot wind. He looked up, and saw the silhouette of a strange coal-black aircraft, its belly jets white-hot as it passed fifty feet overhead at a good running pace. Heat shimmer surrounded it, and its color made its shape hard to discern against the inky sky, but it was clearly military-looking if unfamiliar. _Part of some other country's inventory? Surely not custom-made; even Top doesn't have that kind of money._

The bogie slewed around like a chopper, spitting out four figures. They fell unnaturally upright, and their descent slowed as they approached the ground. The concrete wall blocked his view of the last stage of their descent, but he was sure they'd landed safely. Most of the troopers got unsteadily to their feet and splashed gamely towards the Gens' LZ, disappearing over the concrete wall.

He heard a heavy weapon firing, maybe an M-60, and figured someone was shooting at the plane. The aircraft rushed to a spot near the perimeter fence and stooped. Smoke and steam boiled up beneath it, and the gunfire ceased. It rose again, paid out a line of some sort from its open rear door, and a figure slid down it to stop at the end, twenty or thirty feet above the ground, swinging in a wide arc as the aircraft turned and jinked around. Gunfire sounded again, small arms from several locations. Still swinging in a wide circle beneath the plane, the figure drew a sidearm and fired three careful, widely-spaced shots. The gunfire from the ground stilled again.

The assault craft drifted their way once more, the pressure and heat from its lift jets palpable from a hundred yards away. The figure playing Tarzan underneath the plane continued to fire measured shots as the aircraft circled the compound. Colby was certain that the figure was Anna, and that every shot she fired was one less Keeper to trouble the Gens on the ground.

The aircraft drifted out of sight, and its noise faded away, and the compound grew quiet. Ivery tried to talk to him, but he shook his head and the man closed his mouth. They waited, thoroughly soaked and still lying in a couple inches of water, listening. Time passed. Then they both heard boots approaching unseen from the other side of the wall.

"I'm at the west wall, or what's left of it," came a girl's voice, nearly on top of them. Ivery's eyes widened: in surprise or recognition, Colby couldn't tell. "IO's strongpoint looks like a trailer park after a tornado. I think Sarah was venting a little when she whipped up her storm." A pause, then she said, "Okay. If you're sure you don't need any help, I'll wait for you here. Doesn't look like there's much resistance left, anywhere."

A gun spoke, a three-round burst that spanged off the other side of the concrete wall. "Jeepers," the girl said. A moment later, the gun spoke again, immediately followed by a clattering sound and a loud grunt. Then the girl spoke again, from a short distance away. "What are you, stupid? How many times do you guys have to see bullets bounce off me before you get the point? You're just making me mad." Another grunt. "There. Now lie quiet till we're gone, _will_ you? Be thankful it was me you took your potshot at, and not Dixie."

_Dixie?_

"Ayuh," came a new voice, weirdly accented but familiar. "An if you din have him tied up arready, I'd shoot him anyway. How ya doin, carrot top?"

"This was too easy. I keep looking around, wondering when IO's going to spring the _real_ trap."

"Heh. Ain't none such. By the time Pocahontas was done with em, they cunna fought off a pack a Boy Scouts. Make you wonder why ya been runnin from em for two years, dunnit?"

"Stop it, Dixie. This raid was a one-shot. We're not joining your little army. We're just here for a friend of Mr. Lynch's and Anna's."

"Yeah, well, if he's such a great pal, how come they arranged the op so neither of em would have to be the one to find him?" The voice dropped in pitch. "Mebbe we better talk this over beforehand, fill you in on a couple things."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we're not here to _rescue_ the sumbitch. We're-" Silence. Then a figure bounced over the wall to land with a splash, flat-footed and facing them, rifle trained and ready.


	7. Q and A

Ivery's heart dropped into his groin as he saw the camo-clad form land in front of him, water splashing from its boots. It was the chameleon, Anne Devereaux, wearing a long blonde wig, but obviously the Twelve-Five they'd been hunting. She was wearing amber shooter's glasses, and he thought her eye color was lighter, but the face was still Ivana's at twenty-five, and the look on it was the one they'd shared in the conference room. "The piece, geek boy. Doubt you know which end the bullet comes outta, but lose it anyway."

It was only then that he remembered he was armed. He sat up slowly, and carefully removed the weapon from its belt holster. He set it in the inch of water still filling the floor of the warehouse and shoved it across the concrete towards her, raising a splash.

She didn't bother to pick it up. "Come on over, sugar. Look what the cat dragged in." She rested the rifle on her hip.

Fairchild swung a leg over the low wall, then the other. He noted the two women were dressed alike, in military-looking outfits of gray camouflage, and wore the same amber glasses, with tiny mikes at the corners of their mouths. He was surprised to see that the big redhead was carrying a rifle as well, a much larger one with an ammunition belt wound round her forearm instead of a clip. She looked at him with an unreadable expression. "Hello, Doctor. Long time no see."

She offered him a hand up. He reached for it, only to have his hand slapped away with stinging force. The chameleon glared down at him. "You don't touch her, ever again. Get up by y'self." Caitlin seemed about to say something, and then a call appeared to come in on her headset, distracting her.

He stood, a little unsteadily, and the chameleon stepped past him to stand looking down at Colby, still lying on his side in the water. She rested her rifle butt back on her hip, and placed her free hand on the other, looking like an improbable ad in some gun magazine.

Colby looked up at her, water from his hair dripping into his eyes. "You shouldn't have come."

"I'll go where I please without IO's permission, pretty boy. You been wantin to meet me, I hear."

"You're regional command?" He blinked water from his eyes. "I thought you'd be taller."

She righted the chair with her free hand. "You're a witty guy. You'd think a man who's been Ivana's prisoner wouldn't have the presence of mind. I hear IO's interrogation methods don't leave much mind behind."

"You should have seen me before."

"An yet, you wun too smart to get caught. After all the times you made fools of the folks tailin you, too."

"I was distracted. I think the blood left my head for a while and gathered at a different extremity."

She frowned at him. "Gonna fix that smart mouth for you, traitor."

Caitlin had been a few steps away, talking in a low voice to someone on the radio, and getting bad news, judging by the look on her face; the little Gen's statement stopped her in mid-sentence. "Dixie. What-"

"Told you we needed to talk." The chameleon flicked a glance Ivery's way. "Not in front of this one, less you doan mind killin him later."

"No! What are you _talking_ about?"

The smaller Gen turned to Caitlin, putting her back to him. He saw that most of her hair was bound in a heavy braid down her back. _Correction: wig. But I didn't think you could braid one all the way up like that._ She was so close that the heavy blonde cable had almost touched him as she'd turned; it hung within easy reach, swaying as she moved her head, a worm on a hook.

"Like I said, this ain't no rescue mission." The chameleon indicated Colby with a head movement that almost put her tail into Ivery's hand. "Whatever fix he's in, he put hisself there, and not for our sakes."

He reached forward quickly. Caitlin's eyes and mouth opened, but by then the braid was in his hand, and he gave it a sharp yank.

The wig didn't come off; he saw the skin pull and stretch, and realized with a sick shock that the tail was real hair solidly embedded in her scalp. Dixie fell toward him. But, quick and agile as a cat, she twisted as she fell, and he found himself bent backwards painfully over the wall, her hand a steel clamp around his throat. Her face was inches from his. Through bared teeth, she hissed, "Touch me again, you greasy little pervert, an I'll snap your neck."

She gave him a hard shove that folded him over the concrete. She stepped back, quivering like an attack dog waiting for a command. "Get him out of here. Now, or swelp me I'll kill him."

"Over there," Caitlin said quietly. She pointed with her rifle to a large metal cubicle, an oven or cooler perhaps, with a heavy door. "Let's go." On the way, she said in a low voice, "What were you _doing_?"

Walking was painful; Dixie's rough handling had scraped skin raw, and pulled something in his back. He grunted, "I thought she was… your housekeeper… in a wig."

"Don't tell her. They don't like being reminded they all look alike."

_All?_

"Where… do they come from?"

"No questions. You already know more than is good for you." They reached the door, and Kat pulled down on the large handle. The door swung open to reveal a dark and empty interior bounded by blank steel walls. The floor was dry. There was a switch outside the door, but nothing happened when she flicked it on. She seemed not to notice; just stared into the box. "Could be worse. At least you've got room to move around. Probably airtight, but someone should come for you before that matters. There's a handle on the inside, I see. Don't try to use it. On second thought…" She grasped the inside handle and twisted it off.

He turned to her. "Don't do this."

She didn't look at him, just stared into the cubicle-sized space with eyes that were cool and unsympathetic. "Don't what? Lock you up in a bare dark cell?" She reached up and used her finger to poke several holes high in the double steel wall, as easily as if it were foil. "There. That's more than my sister got. You go in there. Now."

-0-

Colby looked at his new captor, suddenly uncertain. "You look cute as hell in that outfit," he said in a low voice. "But how did you keep the hair on?"

"Huh." She reached out and tugged gently at his hair. "What keeps yours on?" She gave her head a tiny shake. "Wun _all_ a fairy story, pretty boy."

-0-

Ivery stood near the door, senses straining in the dimness of the cooler. The holes Kat had punched in the wall were too high to see out of, and he had nothing to stand on; but he could hear surprisingly well.

"Is the good doctor secure?" Dixie's mocking voice seemed to come from just outside the door.

"Yes. And you don't have to worry about him hearing anything. The walls have three inches of Styrofoam between them." _The perforations. She didn't think about them. She must be very upset or preoccupied._ "All right, Dixie. Why aren't we untying that man? Isn't that why we're here?"

"He was a plant, darlin. He was never on our side. He was just tryin to get on the inside so he could wreck us."

"No. He helped us."

"He never did anything for you that really mattered. You never got any information from him you cunna got somewhere else. Whatever help he gave you mighta made it easier to hide, but it din keep you out of Ivana's hands. He was just building trust. That's how you fish, you know. You gain a fish's trust an then abuse it."

"Dixie… what are we doing here, then?"

"Drivin home a lesson. Makin anybody at IO think twice about playin a double game with us. Keepin the people we have inside IO honest." A pause. "Makin an example."

"No."

"Yes."

"I'm team leader. You agreed. I say no."

"You have tactical command of the team in the field. I'm responsible for strategic policy decisions for this whole sector. I say _yes_."

"Anna won't like this."

"Why do you spose Jock made sure she wouldn't be here? Why I came instead?" Dixie's voice turned sharp and bitter. "Cuz, for once, he had a job for her he wasn't sure she'd do. She's half sweet on this asshole, and Jock wanted to spare her. But don't think I came jus' cuz he snapped his fingers, carrot top. An don't think he can stop me with a word. Like you said: you ain't in my army. He's not in my chain of command. An even if he was, he'd come down on my side of this. He prizes loyalty, an despises perfidy."

"'Perfidy.' That's the biggest word I've ever heard you use."

"Cain't insult me by badmouthin where I came from, sugar. I doan like the place either." Her voice softened. "I know you're upset bout this, but it's my decision, and my responsibility."

"I could go over your head." Kat's voice had a desperate edge now.

"To _who_, sugar? Who do ya know gives _me_ orders? For all _you_ know, I report to Matt and Nicole." Now her voice was dark and brittle again. "Think of it. Matt would back me up in a heartbeat. What then? Think Nicole would take your side? The girl who's livin with her boyfriend?"

"We share a roof, not a bed," the girl replied hotly.

"I'm sure Nicole understands that. She's real liberal-minded." A pause. "Tell ya what. You can do what you want with the good doctor. Jus let it go, girl. Take your consolation prize an walk away."

He could hear his own pulse while she thought it over. He felt a stab of guilt, knowing that he was being used as a counter to bargain away Colby's life. But he told himself the man's fate was decided anyway. At last, Caitlin said, "What are you going to do?"

"Well, I thought about killin him, but that won't do. They can make up any story they like about what happened to him, make a martyr out of him or jus' forget him. That cain't happen. So we're gonna send him back to his buddies a changed man. Livin proof what a bad idea it is to play us false."

"I'm getting Doctor Ivery out of this." He heard her hand on the big pull handle. "He's not evil, just misguided."

"I'd think a li'l harder bout that, if I was you. I din call him a greasy little pervert for nothin."

"I don't want to hear this." The door opened a centimeter and was pushed shut again.

"Doan spose you do. But you need to, just the same. You're thinking of him as the kindly guy who made those embarrassin physicals go easy. Darlin, a vet woulda been just as gentle with a racehorse. Your dear Doctor Ivery is the monster who designed those cells, and the brainwashing treatment. He's the one put your sister in that black pit and fed her drugs, tryin to steal her mind."

"No."

"Yes. An that ain't all. What they did to y'all. You think it was all _research_?" Her voice dropped low. "Fifty teenage hotties, naked an scared, shoved into twenty cells with five cameras runnin nonstop in each of em. Thousands of hours of recordings. Think it all went into the archives, and none of em made any copies?"

_No. It wasn't like that, _he thought._ We caught just one man trying to sneak out a disc. Ivana had him put up against the wall right next to the door and shot. She wouldn't let them scrub the blood away for a month, to make sure everyone with business in the video library saw it. For security's sake, not your modesty, but still._

"They were with you, watchin, while you ate and slept, when you used the toilet or diddled yourselves. When one a you went crazy and started beatin on the walls screamin, the cameras caught every jiggle. As you lay on your bed with your knees to your chin, cryin for your mother, one of em was zoomin in for a beaver shot." Dixie's voice grew harder with each sentence. "They call themselves Zookeepers, Caitlin. That's what you are to them, jus' a pretty animal, a lab specimen, not really human. It's how they rationalize what they did to you, what they plan to do to you. The bastards got stag reels of you girls they show at their barbeques an bachelor parties, count on it. This one-" She tapped on the metal wall "-prolly jacks off ever night to a collection a _your_ surveillance videos."

Dixie paused, and the silence stretched. Ivery waited for Caitlin to say something, anything, but she didn't. Dixie went on. "An that ain't all. No sir. When y'all came outta those cells, they were gonna have their hands full of beautiful young girls ready to do anything they were told. You kids weren't gonna be off on missions all the time. Bet youda spent a lot of your time entertainin the troops."

"Stop it. Please, just stop now."

"You go in there now," Dixie said softly. "You go in there, and when you come out, jus' wash up in a puddle, an you'll feel better. An when you see Colby, remember he was scheming to put you back in your cell. Then you can go home an find some peace, maybe. Or join us, and put paid to _all_ these bastards."

The silence stretched so long, he wondered if they'd left. Then the door creaked open slowly, and his heart stopped.

-0-

"Spose you know what comes next." Dixie stood over Colby, cool-eyed. "For what it's worth, I won't be enjoyin it."

"Me neither." He looked up at her. "But I'm grateful, just the same."

"If there was another way-"

"Thanks. We both know there's not. If I don't regain their trust, I'm a dead man. If I don't get back on the job, your chances of staying out of their hands get too low to be worth figuring." He searched her face. "You're really not her? Another one?"

"She cun do this. Not to a friend. I cun either. So it's a good thing we're strangers, eh?" She tightened the wrist straps on her gloves. "Cain't fake this. It's gonna hurt, and you're gonna take damage. Cain't even give you an aspirin."

"You're giving me my life. That'll do."

"I'll try not to do anything cain't be fixed, but I cain't make it obvious."

"Shut up and get on with it, Anna. Before we both lose our nerve."

"Dixie."

"Whatever."

-0-

"I have a question, for you, Doctor." Caitlin's silhouette filled the doorway. He couldn't make out her face, and her voice was so neutral it terrified him. "Think about it before you answer. Take your time. It's important."

He swallowed and nodded.

"Why did you bring our coveralls downstairs?"

He blinked. "What?"

She set her huge rifle by the door, letting the belt slip off her arm, draping it over the barrel to keep it clean, and stepped inside. "Me, I could understand; I was wearing them when you kidnapped me. But you tranked most of us after lights out, dressed for bed. Sarah was already naked. I imagine you stripped the others before you brought them downstairs. So why bring down our coveralls, shoes, and underwear?"

"Uh, no. I made sure they dressed you in your school uniforms before they brought you down, and undressed you in the rooms."

"_Why?_" It came out like a whipcrack, and startled him into an immediate answer.

"Because, because you were still students, not animals. The environments downstairs-"

"Cages."

He shook his head. "No. They were classrooms too, where you were supposed to get the most important lesson to be learned at Darwin. Eventually, you were all going to leave them, get dressed, and go back to the classrooms upstairs."

"After we'd become more accepting of the new curriculum."

He looked up at her. "Darwin wasn't a zombie factory, Caitlin. Matt and Nicole went through the same process. You don't lose your personality or your free will." _Not permanently, anyway._ "The isolation rooms were designed to burn a tough lesson into you, one that we didn't dare teach you any other way, because it had to be learned perfectly and forever."

Her eyes bored into his, seeming to shine in the dim light. "Namely?"

"Rigid self-control. Distrust of personal motives. Reliance on an outside agency as final authority for any issue, and unquestioning obedience to that authority. Fear of the uncontrolled and unsanctioned use of your power."

"You were turning us into tools."

"We had uses for you," he admitted. "But first and foremost, we had to control the development of your powers. There's simply no telling what any of you may become. You're all dangerous as nukes, some even more so. You have to be defused, brought under control, made harmless and safe. I'm sorry, Caitlin. It's not your fault. But you can't be allowed a normal life." He suddenly realized what his zeal had put in his mouth, and abruptly shut it.

Colby's first cry of pain made them both jerk. It was followed by another. Dixie's voice rode over the tortured groan that followed them. "Go ahead, lover boy. Scream your lungs out. Mebbe there's someone left out there to hear em, and bear witness." A short scream followed, abruptly cut off.

Caitlin turned back to him, and he felt dampness on his face that wasn't rain. "Opinions vary, Doctor. I don't think you'll find many Gens who share your vision. Except Matt and Nicole." She tilted her head. "So you did the same thing to them that you planned for us? But you got them when they were kids. Did you give them a normal life until puberty, and then slap the collars on them and shove them in their cells?"

A series of thuds and scraping noises came through the doorway. His mouth went dry. "They, uh, they didn't manifest at puberty. Stress is another way to trigger the change. They manifested in the enclosures, when they were six and seven."

-0-

Colby's head swam. He was lying on his side again, still bound to the wheelchair, his face lying in an inch of water that still covered the floor. He had no idea how he'd got there, or how long ago. His whole attention was focused on the growing pain in his shattered knees.

The world tilted as the battered chair was righted again. He couldn't help groaning as his shifting weight woke the pain in his cracked ribs. "Look sharp, pretty boy," Dixie's voice said from behind him, pitched to carry. "We got company."

Focusing his eyes hurt, but he could make out several black-clad men standing a short distance away. "Down," a voice said, and they dropped unsteadily to their knees. One clutched at his abdomen; another's arm hung limp. After a brief initial gawp, they all avoided looking at him.

He swallowed. "Sorry," he said. His voice was raspy and not very loud, but he thought they heard. "Getting you into this."

Dixie laughed, a sharp and unpleasant sound. "Doan you worry bout _them_, Frankie. They're gonna come outta this a lot better'n you, less they piss me off."

"Stop it." A young girl's voice. "What are you doing to him?"

"Stay outta this, punkin. This ain't me jus' havin a little fun. This is part of the mission."

"Mr. Lynch-"

"He knows."

"Anna?"

"Why do you think I'm here instead of his girl Friday? I'll tell her when I see her agin."

The girl's voice shook. "You _totally_ depraved bitch. How, how could Anna stand knowing you?"

"Long story, darlin, and not meant for _their_ ears."

"Where's Kat?"

"Meanin, why's she lettin me get away with this? She's kinda busy right now. She's havin a little party of her own, with the turd who ran the hotel in Darwin's basement. You an Bobber tie these gents up and go round up the rest. By the time you get back, we'll prolly both be done."

-0-

Caitlin went still as a statue. "Six and seven?"

"Yes." Ivery swallowed. "We were working in the dark with the Thirteens. Still are, really. We didn't know you aren't born with all your talents. We couldn't take a chance with them." He realized he was talking too much, but he couldn't stop. "As it turned out, it was the right thing to do. We shouldn't have waited for the rest of you to manifest. It makes the conditioning experience more traumatic."

"Oh?' Something in her voice brought him up short. "Little Matt and Nicole, they didn't cry for their mothers?"

"Mother," he corrected automatically. "They're siblings."

"I knew they had the same father. So tell, me, Doctor. Where are their parents? Why did they permit this?"

"They're dead."

She stared at him for a few seconds, and he felt his testicles draw up inside him. "I was wrong," she said quietly. "You _are_ a monster."

"That wasn't my decision. My job was just to break them to harness."

"Obedience to authority again."

"Look at them, Caitlin. You know them both. They're bright, sociable enough, well-adjusted… and completely in tune with their powers, and ready to put them to constructive uses. They're fine young people."

"But they're not whole. We always thought they were a little off. Now I know why. They're partial personalities. Edited." She took another step into the room, and he resisted the useless urge to step back. "Tell me. Have you captured any of the others?"

"Five, so far."

"And what are they like, when they come out of your special little learning environment?" A manic tone was creeping into her voice and manner, a not-quite-sane aspect that reminded him of Matthew when he got into his zone.

"We haven't…" He cleared his throat. "I said it was a mistake to put Thirteens in isolation after they manifest. We tried it with the first couple we recovered. They went catatonic, like the Elevens."

Her fist closed and opened and closed. "So it _was_ a zombie factory. You just didn't know it. Since you put almost all of us in isolation on the same night, we probably would have switched off at the same time. You might not have saved a single one of us." Her head twitched, a shrug of sorts. "A tragic loss, but still preferable to letting us run free and uncontrolled, I'm sure."

"We'll find another treatment. Till then, we'll keep the ones we find collared and sequestered."

Colby's voice rose in a long, drawn-out cry: "Ohhh, Jesus God…" It ended in a series of gagging coughs.

"Caitlin," he said slowly, "you can't want to be a part of that."

"I don't want to spend my life as a prison whore, or be driven insane either." She turned away from him, fists still clenched. "The rules of engagement are changing, Doctor." She waved stiffly at the wreckage around them. "The methods you've been using against a bunch of scared teenage runaways won't help you against… a brigade of Genactive guerillas looking for a fight."

_Brigade. Have to remember that._ To her back he asked, "How many are there, Kat?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't tell you." Then: "Lots. You see how small they are. Multiple births are the norm, and I mean multiple. Think in terms of litters. Like wolves." She continued, softly, as if to herself. "And they all look alike, no matter who their parents are. As if Gen sort of shunts their genetic inheritance aside, in favor of its own template."

"What do the men look like?" _Who do they look like? What other imposters do we have to look out for?_

She shook her head. "If there are any, I've never seen them." She stepped to the open doorway and paused with one hand on the frame. "Your prisoners. Who are they?"

"Keeley and Kara Schaffer, and Julie Rabinovitz. About eight months ago. They were living together and waiting tables in Memphis." _Please, God, don't let her ask any more about that._

"Waiting tables? How did someone spot them waiting tables?"

He swallowed twice without wetting his throat. "It was, ah, a 'gentleman's club'. After a year, the manager talked them into dancing. Someone recognized them."

"Recognized them. Once they were on stage with their clothes off." Something creaked. He saw the side of the steel doorframe compress in her fingers like a soda can. "And the ones whose minds you took?"

"Michael Widmer and Lindsey Summers. We caught them a month after your escape, when they tried to post their story on a news blog. Nothing in between. Jack did a good job."

Colby gave a short scream that faded into a grunt. There was a frightening finality to the way the man fell silent this time. She was silent for a few moments. "I'm going to do what I can to see you get out of here alive, Doctor. It doesn't make any sense; I know you won't stop hunting us. But I can't let you be killed." Then she added, "Not this time, at least. Don't count on my mercy a second time. Frankly, I don't know how much mercy I've got left in me." She moved almost out of the doorway, and paused. "And, Doctor? You want to take very, very good care of those five, and any more you round up before we bring the prison walls down. I'm making that your personal responsibility." She passed through the doorway and turned to face him, again gripping the door. "Stay here. Stay quiet. Just wait until you're absolutely sure we're gone before you come out." She shut the door again, leaving him in the near-dark.

-0-

"Frank. How many kidneys you got?"

"Uh?" He wasn't seeing too clearly any more, or thinking either. The pain had broadened and dulled somewhat, a ceaseless rhythmic background, like bathing in the surf: gripping and releasing, but always there.

"Kidneys. How many?" Anna's voice. No, Dixie's, from close behind, almost in his ear, as if telling a secret.

His lips were glued together with something stickier than dried spit, but he opened his mouth and grunted, "Two."

"Are ya sure? Not everyone does, ya know."

"Yes."

"Do they both work? Doan say yes if you're not sure."

He knew what was coming: the urge to say "no" or remain silent was almost too much to overcome. "Yes."

He was slammed forward. The wheelchair tipped, and he couldn't do anything to break his fall. He tucked his chin to his chest, to keep from breaking his neck and to spare what might be left of his face. His knees and knuckles hit the wet pavement first, and the impact on his broken kneecaps forced a scream from him that emptied his lungs as his forehead smacked the concrete. Then all his previous pain was swept away as the agony from his popped kidney swelled up and burst inside him. Blackness finally took him.

14


	8. Bring It

A flight of five coal-black AH-60s rolled out of the decommissioned and supposedly vacant helicopter hangars of the Imperial Beach Naval Air Station. The Blackhawk variants were formidable helicopters: a combination one-squad troop transport and attack aircraft of the type often referred to as a DAP, or "direct-action penetrator." Modified to bring overwhelming firepower to a small-unit engagement, they each carried a twenty-millimeter rotary cannon and a variety of missiles, as well as a five-man Razor squad. The team was the most potent single force IO had fielded since the First Gulf War.

They took off, formed up over the hills southeast of the airstrip, and headed just north of due east, towards the industrial complex in the foothills just a few miles away. They'd been sitting quietly at the disused base, fully prepped, waiting for a certain signal to cease, or a new one to be given. They'd gotten both, not a good sign at all. Things must be very disorganized at the ambush site.

"Hot damn." A trooper in the lead chopper checked his gear for the fourth time since boarding. The men had their headgear off for now; IO's customized aircraft were quiet enough to converse in flight without resorting to the helmet radios. "They're really gonna turn us loose."

His squad leader, sitting next to him, was also checking his gear. "No choice, really. Not much left of the ambush team's C3, sounds like, but it's for sure the Specials mopped the floor with them. They'll get away clean if we don't stop them."

The first man curled his lip as he looked over his unusual weapon. "So we go in to rescue a bunch of Gerry's Kids. Pussies."

"They weren't Gerry's Kids, Dunn," the squaddie said. "They were SS." He used the approved acronym for the group tasked with apprehending the strange talents that IO hunted; "Keepers" was a name that only Special Security themselves used.

The statement brought a visible change to Dunn's demeanor. Unlike Administration, Research recruited its uniformed men to the same standards as the Razors and X-Teams of the Operations Directorate; in fact, many SS were former Razors.

"This is the bunch from Westminster Mall. Also the ones who took out the SS team out by Miramar." The squad leader pointed to the exotic rifle in his man's hands. "You think they'd let us take that piece out of the armory if they didn't think we had a fight on our hands?"

"That piece" was a strange-looking weapon somewhat resembling a flamethrower. The backpack was a power cell, rather than a tank, connected by a thumb-sized cable to the butt, and the bulbous end of the rifle had an aperture too small to poke a pencil into. It had been code-named a "Tesla rifle" by the technicians who'd first presented it, and had told the troops that it was made using "proscribed tech," apparently some burn-before-reading technological secret. While none of the troopers knew the weapon's operating principles, they were quite familiar with its effects. One shot from a "blaster," as its wielders called it, would punch a fist-sized hole in tank armor, vaporize thirty cubic feet of concrete, or turn a human being inside-out and scatter the remains across an area the size of a half-court. The power pack was good for thirty shots, enough firepower to knock out a tank brigade. Each squad had been issued one, and, although they'd been trained carefully in their use, this was their very first deployment in the field.

"Hot damn," Dunn said, but in a different tone. "We got an honest-to-God war. Falujah comes to So Cal."

The man sitting on the bench across from them spoke up, his tone gritty. "In Falujah, you didn't have to worry about anything but bombs and bullets. You didn't have to wonder whether the guy taking a bead on you was gonna throw a lightning bolt at you, or make your fucking eyes explode with a dirty look."

Dunn snorted. "Get a grip."

"What do you think these 'Specials' _are_, man?" The man stared at Dunn. "I saw Jack Lynch in action once, back in the day. If this is his crew of freaks, we're not gonna capture any of em. And we're not all gonna be coming home, Men in Black guns or no."

"Yeah, well, that's why we make the big money. And the 'capture' part of the 'capture or kill' order went out the window when they called us anyway."

"You know, the warehouse was only six or eight miles away. Shouldn't we _be_ there by now?"

The squad leader stood. "Yeah. Stay put." He moved forward and poked his head into the pilot's compartment. He looked out the windows and said, "What the fuck is _that_?"

"The weirdest storm I ever saw," the pilot said. "Looks like a slow-mo tornado two miles across. Winds something like fifty knots. We can't climb over it. We just circled it, looking for a break; no go. The only way to the warehouse is straight through it. Hope you boys don't get airsick easy."

-0-

"Jus' keep your head down, sugar." Caitlin felt Dixie's fingers on the side of her neck as her hair was drawn back. "Nobody can see. Sick it up, if you gotta; just keep quiet, is all. Far as anybody knows, we're just back here talkin. Lordy," she went on, "ain't done this since the first time Kate tried Wild Turkey."

_Still in character. She's reminding me. _She stared at her knees on the pavement. She hadn't thrown up, quite, but the sight of Frank Colby had knotted her stomach and stolen her balance. She'd barely made it around to the other side of the cooler, away from the eyes of the prisoners who'd materialized while she was inside with Dr. Ivery. "Dixie. Did you really have to…"

"Yes." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "And he knew it. Thanked me beforehand, God bless im, and bucked me up when I was a mite slow to start. That's a helluva man, there." A hand patted her shoulder gently. "He looks like hell, I know, but IO's docs are the best. They'll put him back together again, if they're convinced he's on their side."

"He's not dead? You're sure?" _He's so still and quiet._

"I'm sure. I knocked him out as soon as I could, but I had to put him through hell first. Torture leaves biochemical traces, and you can bet they'll test for em."

She swallowed and regained her feet. "It's still awful. I don't think I'd have… reacted properly if you hadn't warned me. I hope I didn't look as surprised as I felt, when I heard you call me over the radio at the same time you were talking to Mr. Colby. That was quite a ventriloquist act."

Dixie tapped the side of her head. "I used this radio instead of the headset, so's I could use a digital version of my voice. The back-and-forth with Frank took a little time, but not much attention. Jugglin is harder, I bet." She looked up at her. "Ready to face your public?"

She nodded, and together they walked back to the area in front of the cooler. Carefully avoiding looking at the overturned wheelchair, she picked up her rifle from where it stood near the cooler door, wrapped the belt of ammo around her forearm, and looked over the dozen or so prisoners.

The nearest of them was thirty yards away. He was bound with his own cuffs, she guessed, with his back to one of the forest of steel posts that had once supported the building's roof. They were a bedraggled-looking bunch, wet and dirty and disheveled. Some of them were bleeding, and most of them had rents and cuts in their black clothing. All their helmets were gone. They were standing or sitting as their mood or weariness dictated. In the uncertain light, with the roiling black sky overhead, they looked like occupants of Hell's waiting room. "Where did they come from?"

"The other kids been bringin em in, after they check em for weapons. Then I check em agin. I almost allus find somethin." Dixie pulled a slim metal choker from her vest pocket. "They were all wearin these. I only had to break one thumb to find out why. Fore we took the walls down, the whole buildin was rigged to mess up yer heads like those collars. These cancel the effect. I think we better make em our favorite jewelry, just as an insurance policy." She draped it across her throat, and paused. "I need to wear one too, jus for show, but I doan know what it might do to me, so I thought I oughtta wait till you were round fore I slip it on." She clasped it behind her neck and blinked. "Huh. Dun mess up my thinking, far as I can tell, so the neural field prolly won't either. Still, does produce an irritatin buzz." She pinched a small section of it between thumb and forefinger, and Caitlin heard a faint crunch. "Better. Now yours." She produced another choker. "Pull your hair back, sugar. I got a present for ya."

She did, but with a strange reluctance. Dixie put the device around her neck, and her fingers met at the back of her neck to attach the clasp. "For sech a big chickie, you got the neck of a swan. Reckon it'll work though. Damn thing actually looks good on ya." Her look of amusement suddenly changed to alarm. "What is it, sugar? Say summin."

She shivered. "It's okay. The collar's not affecting me or anything. My skin just crawled at… having something from IO around my neck again."

Dixie nodded. "Hope Bobby din have any trouble getting the lil dye job to slip hers on, then. But I got a feelin." She snapped her head towards the prisoners, and her expression hardened. She raised her voice. "What the fuck _you_ lookin at, meat? Any a you wanna be next?" She flung her arm towards the wheelchair. "_Thass_ what you oughtta be starin at. Git yer eyes off her, _now_." She took a step towards them, and another. Her fist balled; Caitlin noticed the leather glove was stained dark, and the knuckles were gummy with dried blood.

"Dixie, they're beaten. Leave them alone."

"Oh, yeah?" Dixie turned to her, the snarl still on her face. "Go over there an take a good look at em, specially the ones din wanna take their helmets off. See if any of em looks familiar. Imagine em in sunglasses, standin guard in the halls at school. Bet some of em know what you look like with your clothes off, baby girl, an what you sound like when you scream." She turned back to them, deliberately. "An mebbe some of em know what words the lil punkin whimpers when she's havin her nightmares." She took another step.

"_We have company_." Mr. Lynch's voice came through the headset. "_Just a few miles away, and coming fast. They may waste a little time looking for an easy way past our Weather Witch's privacy curtain, but I don't think we've got more than ten minutes._"

Caitlin pushed the button that set her mike to voice-activation. "We're finished here, Dragon. Scoot or scrap? Advise."

"_They're too close. Like our President says: if we quit now, they'll follow us home._"

She nodded. "All right. What are we dealing with?"

"_Five Blackhawks, maybe forty men. The birds will be armed for ground support, at least. I expect to whittle them down a bit before they land._"

"Hot Stuff, are you there? Did you catch that?"

Bobby's voice was in her ear. "_Loud and clear. Little sister and I are getting ready._"

"Ninja Master?"

Eddie replied, "_Ditto. Ever see 'Rambo?'_"

She smiled. "Battlefield Barbie and I will form a reserve to plug the gaps, since we're the fast-movers. Keep those helicopters off us, Dragon."

"_I'll have to do more than that, if I'm going to pick you up._"

"Be careful," she said softly. Then she added, "You know we can't afford to lose the plane." She turned off the mike.

Dixie was looking at her slyly. She stroked one finger against another in a shame-on-you gesture. "You sweet on him, sugar? I won't tell."

"He knows. So does she. We're okay with it, I guess."

Dixie shook her head. "I doan get it. The guy's ugly as sin, but you girls are _all_ tetched in the head over him. What gives?"

"It isn't how he looks. It's what he is." She turned. "Let's find some cover nearby."

Dixie went down on one knee, flipped her tail and tendrils onto her back to keep them off the ground, dipped her gloved hands in a puddle, and scrubbed. "You're the boss, copper top." She turned her head towards the bound men. "Doan go way, y'all. I'll be back."

-0-

"_Mayday! Mayday!_" The voice was a shriek in the pilot's headphones, just as his threat indicator went off. Reflexively, he wrenched the stick over. The Blackhawk slid down and sideways as a dark bullet whizzed past.

"Jesus." The squad leader was still crouched between the seats in the pilot's compartment, hanging on to the seat backs. "What-"

"Dunno." The bogie had jumped the flight the instant they'd come bumbling through the cloudwall, before they'd had a chance to form up and regain their bearings; radar hadn't shown him until he'd been right on top of them. "Looks kinda like a Nighthawk, but not." He keyed his throat mike. "This is Alpha. Identify, Mayday."

"_This is Charlie,_" the voice continued, calmer now. "_Both engines out, landing autogiro two clicks west of the objective._ _What the fuck was that?_"

"Guess they got air support. Nighthawk, maybe." He turned to his copilot.

The man shook his head, looking at his displays. "Too nimble. And stealthier. It flickers on the scope like a fuckin firefly. Just some thermal plume from his exhaust, not enough for radar lock."

"Charlie, what did it hit you with?"

"_Dunno. Fucker just popped up out of nowhere and zipped by, and every alarm on the helo went off. Cabin temp's a hundred fuckin degrees._"

"Sounds like he hosed you with his exhaust, Charlie. Ride it down and let out your squad before you try a restart. Let the turbine intakes cool down."

"_Yeah. Got my hands full right now, Alpha. Charlie out._"

The squaddie spoke up. "Maybe he's not armed, just a transport."

"That would be nice. I don't want to dogfight with him. But these people are pulling too many rabbits out of their hats." He switched his mike to flight frequency. "Alpha to flight. Arm Sidewinders; leave the Sparrows cold. He's a ghost on radar, but his exhaust's plenty hot." He followed his own instructions, bringing his heat-seeking missiles live. To the trooper behind him he said, "If we can't swat him, we'll have to bungee-drop you."

The man nodded, understanding. If the hostile aircraft had any ground-attack capability, getting caught with their wheels in the dirt could mean death for them all.

The threat receiver went off again, from behind him this time. He heeled the chopper over again. "Got you now, bastard." The jet would flash by, and he'd put a couple of Sidewinders into its white-hot exhaust at point-blank range.

Again, the indistinct black shape hurtled by. But the "target acquired" tone didn't sound, and he didn't see any glow from its tail. Then he realized that the forked tail was leading the plane, not following.

The plane was flying backwards.

Then the top of his windshield starred and alarms began to sound. A huge _whump_ and a sudden loss of stick response told him at least one of the compressors was gone. The squaddie fell against his seat as the chopper nosed down. "Guess he's armed, after all."

-0-

Dixie looked into the northern sky, smiling as she watched the dueling aircraft against the backdrop of the churning clouds. "Tol' him it'd all come back."

The three remaining helicopters were scattering across the sky, a flock of starlings spying an approaching hawk. She looked eastward down the broad main drive of the complex, to the distant parking lot. A helicopter stooped over the asphalt, its side doors opening. Black-clad men tumbled out fifty feet above the ground, lines trailing out above them. The lines went taut, stretched, slowed the troopers' falls. When the men were poised just a few feet above the ground, the elastic lines snapped at both ends and disappeared. The helicopter rose, turning, and the troopers dropped their feet on the ground and sprinted for cover. The whole process took less than five seconds.

"Wow." Caitlin stared after them. "_That's_ got to take practice."

Dixie nodded. "Ayuh. Looks like this bunch is Razors. Doan wanna underestimate these guys. They got skills. They play the game the way Jock an your dads useta, fore they found a way to be even more dangerous." She looked to the northwest, where one of the choppers had been forced down. "Prolly mad as hornets, too."

-0-

"That's it." The pilot adjusted his blades, and the helicopter leaped skyward. "Squads are all boots-on-ground."

"_Take the plane out,_" said the flight leader, speaking from his downed aircraft just north of the warehouse. "_Put him down hard._"

"Wilco." He brought all his missiles to search mode. The fucker might be quick as a waterbug, but Blackhawks were nimble too, especially unloaded, and there were three of them. This guy was going to have to be _very_ good to come out on top of this fight.

Still, he'd never seen a winged aircraft do what this one had. Harriers were jets that could hover just long enough for a vertical landing; F35s were supposed to be able to be capable of sustained hover at low altitudes, but not like this. This damned thing performed like a rocket-powered helicopter, and didn't seem to require lift from airfoils at all. That backwards-flight stunt had made him want to rub his eyes.

And it was armed and armored, besides. It hadn't fired any missiles, but it sported some kind of high-speed autocannon that was a terror. The projectiles weren't even slowed down by the choppers' composite armor; they just went in one side and came out the other. They were small, judging by the size of the holes, but he was sure that even one hit in the right place would take out an engine. If this bird was a DAP, it could probably clear tanks out of its LZ.

"_Bravo to flight. Bogie at three-three-zero, range five thousand._"

"Tally ho," he said, a fancier way of saying _get him_. His Sidewinders weren't getting a sniff of its heat trail, and the Sparrows still couldn't get a radar lock. It looked like it was going to be a gunfight. He ran a quick systems check on his twenty-millimeter rotary cannon as he rushed northward to engage.

-0-

"Here they come." Roxanne stood at Bobby's side in the wide alley, a blind canyon formed by three-story buildings. "Echoes make them sound like a cattle stampede, don't they?" She folded her arms and stood waiting.

He looked down at her. "Not too late to change your mind. You could do this just as easy from inside a building."

"No." She stared down the alley to where it ended in a T-juncture forty yards down. "I'm sick and tired of running and hiding, Bobby. I'm so scared I can't spit, but just this once I'm going to face them."

He gave her a good look, then; it seemed as though he hadn't really looked at Kat's spunky kid sister in a long time. Her eyes, usually a luminous violet, were dark lilac, a sure sign of high emotion to someone who knew her. The breeze tossed strands of black and purple hair around her face in a way that made him think of Sarah. He noted with a smile that she'd worn party makeup to a gang rumble with a platoon of Keepers. She looked brave, and determined, and cute as could be, and he was proud to be standing with her. It occurred to him that Rox's flirtation with womanhood had become a full-blown courtship.

Somehow, without looking at him, she knew his eyes were on her. "What?"

"Just realized. Roxanne Spaulding, you're going to be a beautiful girl when you grow up."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "I'd smack you, but I can't afford the distraction. Holding all this stuff up is taking everything I've got. If they get frisky, I've got nothing but bluff for them. It's all on you."

"I'm all over it." He turned his eyes to the end of the alley, and folded his arms as well.

A black helmet popped into view around the distant corner and ducked back. Then two rifles swung around, pointed at them. They were followed by the two black-clad troopers carrying them. "Freeze!"

"Like we're doing anything but standing here waiting for you," he muttered.

The Razors moved in a crouch down the alley, followed by two more with their weapons pointed up and at an angle, swinging back and forth as they covered the upper windows, and finally a fifth man, who walked backwards to provide a rear guard, carrying a weird-looking rifle that reminded him of the _Ghostbusters _gadget, complete with backpack. He pointed his weapon upwards too, also swinging from side to side. When the close-knit group got within twenty yards, one of the frontrunners shouted, "On the ground. Face down. _Do_ it!" His voice came through the helmet like a high-pitched Darth Vader.

"As if," Roxy replied. With a rumble, huge chunks of the buildings' second and third stories fell to the ground behind the Razor team, shaking the earth. Dust swirled and settled, revealing a ten-foot barricade of rubble.

After a moment of alarm, all the troopers trained their guns forward. Rox ignored them. "Counteroffer. Lose your weapons, including the sidearms and knives. Then _you_ lie down on the ground, and we'll tie you up, and you can wait for the third string. Unless you want to die today."

The first man took a step towards her with his rifle pointed at her head. She looked at the blank faceplate coolly. "They didn't even brief you who you're up against, did they? You don't have a clue. I can make your bullets drop to the ground as soon as they clear the barrel. I can make the friggin _gun_ too heavy to lift." Her eyes narrowed, still staring into the visor. "I can make your brain weigh three thousand pounds and come squirting out your nose. Or if you really piss me off, just have your liver drop out your rectum. You don't want any of this."

Bobby restrained himself as the man from the back stepped forward and pointed his weird rifle at her. The end had a tiny hole that looked like a laser beam might come out of it. "This doesn't fire bullets. I can blow you apart with one shot. Bet I can pull the trigger before you can stop me. Last chance, girly. Get on the ground."

She unfolded her arms slowly and raised a finger skyward.

"_Both_ hands up. Drop to your knees."

"Wasn't surrendering, pencil dick. I'm _pointing_."

One of the men in the back row looked up. "Ohhh, _fuck_."

The special-weapons guy never wavered. "What?"

"There's a fuckin water tank, looks like ten million gallons. It's leaning over the alley on two legs, right over our heads. I don't know what's holding it up."

"_I'm_ holding it up." She smiled into the blank visor. "Take your shot, and one second later it'll be on top of you. And if your buddy looks a little closer, he'll see steam jetting out of it. Just like a great big teakettle."

"Up to your eyebrows in boiling water," Bobby said. "Not as good as a napalm strike. You might even live through it. Not that you'd want to."

The rifleman switched his point of aim to Bobby. "Put it back on the roof or I'll plug him."

Roxy put on a resigned look. "Well, nobody can say I didn't try." She turned to Bobby. "You were right. It was a waste of time. Do what you want. I'm done trying to protect them."

This time, the barrel wavered. "What?"

Bobby said, "She means, we're done being nice."

The rifleman screeched and dropped his weapon. Then he snatched off his smoking gloves and threw them down.

Bobby gave them his best imitation of his father's my-patience-is-at-an-end look. "She asked politely. I'm not going to. And you know, I'm done talking to a bunch of walking eight-balls."

All five men stiffened and snatched at their helmets. The four still armed slung their rifles to free their hands. They removed their headgear and flung it to the ground. The insides of the helmets smoked and burst into flame. When the first of the troopers unslung his rifle again, he cried out and dropped it.

Bobby looked at the man with the weird rifle, which was still slung. "Cool gun. Real Buck Rogers. All it needs is a shark-fin front sight. Anybody ever tell you what happens when the power pack overheats?" He smiled wide. The man's eyes widened as he felt the growing heat on his back through the armor. "Don't bother taking it off. You couldn't throw it far enough."

The man looked from Bobby to Rox and back, sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip. "You're, you're nuts. Totally crazy."

"Absolutely," he agreed. "And the more threatened we feel, the crazier we get. One of Gen's less-understood side effects." He cocked his head. "By the way. The pack's already as hot as it's going to get. But it couldn't power a flashlight anymore. Time to finish ditching your weapons." He looked at the rifleman who'd threatened to plug him, who now stood without his rifle, gloves, or helmet. "You first. In about thirty seconds, everything metal on your body is going up to a thousand degrees."

The man reached for the sidearm on his hip, and Bobby tensed. But the trooper just pulled it out of its holster and quickly tossed it away. _Getting it away from him, before the clip cooks off and blows off his leg._

"Good start. But I hope you're not wearing a belt. Doubt you could get the armor off before the buckle burns down to the bone."

As the trooper began frantically fumbling with catches, Rox said, "You can't run, you don't dare hurt us, and we've had two years to think up gruesome ways to take IO stormtroopers out of the game. Let's be smart."

The man was moaning and tearing at his body armor; he was already starting to smell like clothes just out of the dryer. Another man dropped his rifle to help get it off. "Hold still," he said as he used his knife to cut the webbing holding it together. Within seconds, the trooper was standing in his underwear, his blistered hands under his armpits.

Bobby looked at the other four men. "Well? Do we really have to do this one at a time?"

-0-

"Where did he _go_?" Charlie Team's leader was thoroughly pissed, and more than a little worried.

"I don't know." The trooper cast his eyes around the street, littered with storm-tossed debris. "He was ten meters behind me when we turned the corner. He just disappeared. His GPS doesn't even return a ping."

"We do _not_ have time for this." For the third time since the squad's tailchaser had dropped off the face of the earth, the team leader called his missing man on the squad frequency. "Simms. Where are you? Report position."

Silence; not even static.

He let out a breath. "This isn't turning out to be a good day, Bob."

"No. First we get swatted out of the sky by a UFO. Then Simms goes offline and disappears. I don't like it, Top." His second-in-command glanced up. There was nothing to see of the air battle from the bottom of this brick-lined canyon, but it sounded like the bogie was chasing the three remaining choppers all over the sky. "Seems we've failed to retain the initiative."

A series of clicking noises sounded in his ear. "_Aha. So that's how it works. Can anyone hear me?_" Not Simms.

"Who is this?"

"_I'm the dude you're looking for. Not having much luck, eh? Why not give up and go home? Oh, that's right. Lost your ride home. Well, you could still give up._" The voice was deep and hoarse, but the choice of words and the cocky tone made him think he was talking to a kid.

Charlie team's chopper, the first one downed, had landed with dead engines but no other damage. The pilots had still been trying to fire them up and join the fight when the Razors had got off the bus and headed for the warehouse. "Why would I want to do that?" He muted his mike. "Get a fix on him."

"_Well, from where I stand, it looks like we're owning you._"

"Just because we haven't caught you yet, it doesn't mean we're beat."

"_I wasn't talking about you, specifically. Check in with the rest of the gang lately?_" The caller switched off.

He keyed the command frequency, to call the group leader in Alpha Team. "Alpha, what's your status?"

"_Still picking up the pieces. He put our faces in the dirt about a klick north of the LZ, right after you. The other three helos are dogfighting with him almost over our heads. We should be ready to move in five, but we won't be traveling fast. Have you heard from Bravo? They dropped inside the fence._"

"Negative. Something happen?"

"_Roger that. Eight minutes ago, they reported contact with a pair of Specials wearing grey camo. Then half a minute later, the command set screeched for a second and went dead. We can't raise any of them. Helmet GPSs are out too._"

"What about the others?"

"_Delta and Echo are coming in from the west. Cautiously. They're checking in regular, and report no contact._"

"Oh yeah. Everything's going according to plan. Except half of us got our horses shot out from under us, and the assault force is scattered from hell to breakfast, which makes us vulnerable until we link up. And we _still_ don't know what we're up against."

A jarring thump reached them from somewhere to the northwest. Bob said, "Compressor failure. Catastrophic."

"Alpha. Was that ours or theirs?"

"_Ours. He's a tough bastard. Missiles won't lock on him, and he's so jinky it's hard to score a hit with the Gatlings. Even when they do, it doesn't look like they're getting through his armor. Meanwhile, he doesn't seem to have a bit of trouble getting a bead on our birds, and he's shooting them up like beer cans._"

"_Alpha._"A new voice, breathless. "_This is Delta Three, come in._"

"_Alpha to Delta. What's happening?_"

"_I'm running for my life, Alpha. We got jumped, maybe four-five minutes ago. Not fifty meters from the drop zone._" They could hear his feet pounding along, and his labored breathing."_Two Specials, look like… fashion models in grey camo._"

A pause, presumably while the group leader looked at Delta's telemetry and GPS. "_The rest of the team appears to be down but not dead, Three. What happened? How are they armed?_"

"_Little one's got a Fifteen and a grenade launcher. Big one's… carryin an M-60 like it's a Daisy rifle. Neither of em fired a shot. They're monsters. Swear to God, I saw the big one catch a bullet in her hand… just catch it and drop it to the ground. They threw us around like dolls. I got tossed through a second-story window… and it was over by the time I could find my feet. I snuck away while they were… searching the bodies. I started running for Echo, trying to link up._" They heard an impact and a grunt of pain.

"_Delta Three?_"

"_Just fell down. It's a bitch, running with a broken arm. How much farther?_"

"_Just half a klick south._"

"_Good, I'm about run out. Better give em a heads up, I bet those two crazy bitches are right- HUHHH!_"

"_Delta Three?_"

Silence.

"_Charlie, you okay?_"

"Not really. Lost one man to a Special who's dogging us."

"_Alpha to Echo. What's your status?_"

"_No contact, Alpha. We're among the buildings, maybe a klick west of the warehouse. What's happening north of us?_"

"_Hear something?_"

"_About half a minute's worth of gunfire. Delta spot a rabbit?_"

"_Bravo and Delta are gone. It's on, boys. You've got hostiles half a klick north, likely headed your way._"

"_Roger that. We'll be ready._"

"_Charlie, anything?_"

His second gave a thumbs-up. "We think we have our shadow located. Going after him now."

"_Careful. We don't know how many of them there are, but they seem to hunt in pairs. And they like ambushes._"

"Roger that." He signed off. "Well?"

Bob gestured towards the building directly south of them. "Other side of the building. Doesn't seem to be moving."

"Okay. We'll split up and come around both sides. Don't want him to get away." He gave Wilson to Bob, and took Warren with him. They advanced cautiously, almost back-to-back, eyes in constant motion.

-0-

The Dragon's collision alarm shrieked, but Lynch was already yanking upward on the stick. The belly jets roared with added power as he dipped the nose. His harness cut into him as the aircraft bounded out of its previous trajectory, arcing upward with its nose pointed towards the ground. A burst of cannon fire from one of the remaining Blackhawks passed beneath him, chased by the chopper, still firing. As it slipped into his targeting circle, he loosed a short burst from his railgun and watched the main rotor disintegrate.

"Dammit." The chopper dropped like a stone, certain to kill every man aboard. Up till now, he'd been able to disable the attack helicopters without casualties. But the pilots had gotten smarter and more aggressive as their numbers dwindled, and the easy kills weren't coming anymore.

He was further handicapped by the constricted airspace; the five-klick circular boundary imposed by Sarah's stormwall made the fight above the industrial park feel like a cage match. Not that he wouldn't have tried to stay close to the action on the ground anyway. They weren't that far from populated areas; a stray round from a Twenty could kill a lot of people, and _his_ stray rounds were likely landing in Mexico, or the Pacific.

He swiveled the stick, and the craft twisted neatly at the top of its arc and came down belly-first, facing the direction it had come. He applied forward thrust and banked steeply, headed back towards the center of his aerial battleground. He wondered if any civilians were witnessing the fight. IO would have picked a sparsely occupied area to begin with, then cleared it for maybe a couple klicks from the warehouse. Also, the approaching storm would have closed businesses and sent people home. He was sure Sarah's magic trick was being recorded on plenty of cameras and cellphones, but from a distance, and the clouds and wind-carried debris were thick enough to hide what was going on inside. He couldn't guess whether the sound of gunfire and explosions was audible through the express-train noise of the storm, but if so, he was sure IO would have a plausible explanation for the public. _People will believe anything the government tells them these days, if it can put a 'national security' spin on the story. Nothing like fear to make people suspend their common sense._

He had little worry of getting shot down. The Dragon's skin defied missile radars and cannon rounds both; a hit from a Twenty made the hull ring like a hammer on an anvil, but they weren't penetrating. Unless he took a heatseeker up a fan or a cannon shell in the windshield, he could stay up here potshotting choppers all day… or until his fuel ran out.

His fuel state was a growing concern. Efficient as the Dragon's engines were, he'd been gobbling JP4 almost since startup, and he wasn't sure how much he'd need to reach their final destination. But he couldn't do anything to conserve until the sky was clear of hostiles. _At least I'm denying the troopers air support._

A flight of missiles rushed towards him: a full complement, radar-guided and heatseekers both. His threat receiver didn't sound, so he was sure they'd been fired scattershot without lock in hopes that one might simply run into him. He dialed down his compression temperature, reducing his engines' efficiency but lowering his exhaust temperature below lock threshold. The aircraft plummeted as his thrust evaporated. _If Caitlin were here, she'd be painting the walls with puke, I suppose._ The missiles passed overhead and he followed their back trail, looking for the helicopter that had fired them. He dismissed his worries and musings and turned his mind fully to the business at hand. _One left._

-0-

Ivana was barely controlling her fury. "What do you mean, 'not looking good'?"

Ruche felt dampness on his upper lip, but he didn't touch it. "They didn't walk in blind. Loaded for bear, more like. A freak storm leveled the warehouse and several other buildings nearby. Ivery's gimmick never had a chance to work. The Keeper team was just… swept away."

"He warned them somehow."

"Or they didn't trust him. The Razor force in reserve was committed immediately, but they're taking it on the jaw. Casualties on the ground upwards of thirty percent, and they're not even formed up inside the compound yet. The choppers are being engaged from the _air_, and getting wiped out." He swallowed. "This isn't another warning shot. They mean business."

"Are we in radio contact?"

"Not with Ivery's men. They might all be dead. The Razors still have their command-and-control net, but they report to us indirectly, through Santini."

"That will have to change. What's this about the helicopters?"

"The Gens have an aircraft that looks like a Stealth, but much tougher and impossibly maneuverable. It's knocking the choppers out of the sky."

She leaned forward. "Witnesses?"

He shook his head. "Area's clear. Besides, the storm sort of surrounds the combat zone like a curtain. Guess Lynch and his friends wanted privacy, too."

"Gerry," she said, her voice dangerously calm now. "How did they get their hands on an advanced military aircraft of unknown type? It _is_ unknown, I take it? Not something from our inventory?"

He shook his head, praying he was right and hadn't missed something. "No. No records of related research either."

"That doesn't leave many possibilities, Gerry. Are you suggesting someone else could build this without our knowledge?" Her voice was tightly controlled, but he felt his head in the stock and sensed the blade poised high above.

"No. I'm suggesting a cache of PT that Lynch squirreled away before he left, and erased all the traces. Probably killed everyone associated with the projects."

She shook her head. "Not Jack's style. Besides, Research people disappearing would be noticed."

"Then they're still on the payroll, and probably still in league with him." _Ivana loves conspiracies._ "We're talking about a large organized faction inside IO. Whatever they want, it can't be good for _us_." He watched her turn the idea over in her mind, and felt the cool shadow of the blade disappear.

Softly, Ivana tapped a fingernail on the table. "What's your gut feeling, Gerry? Is Colby what he says, or is he part of it?"

He looked at her, still uneasy. Even though their association wasn't a true friendship, he'd known her longer than anyone had except Ivery, and he'd never seen Ivana Baiul uncertain about anything. It made him want to be very careful of his step. "He's loyal to IO, but not to you personally. That puts limits on how far you can trust him, but within those limits, he's completely reliable. According to the truth detector, he lied to Lynch and told you the truth. He's our man, as far as he's anybody's." He told himself he was being pragmatic and analytical; that he wasn't now displaying gratitude or pity or admiration for a man he'd despised from a distance for years. "I trust his motives, at least."

"Then why did they come for him, and in such strength?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps they're still fooled. Lynch is famous for his loyalty to subordinates. Or they might have seen this as a chance to open the game with a crippling first strike. Perhaps we'll find some clues in debrief, if we have any survivors to interview."

"I note you said 'survivors'. And you didn't mention taking captives."

He shook his head slightly. "It's not going that way. I think we should disengage before we lose everybody."

"And hang Ivery and his people out in the wind?"

"Ivana, we can't reach them. Either they'll be there after the Gens break contact, or they're already dead, Colby included."

She rested her fingertips on the table. He wasn't fooled by the casual gesture; her fingertips were white from pressure. "Round up a relief force and send them in, whatever you can scrape together. Get word to the Razors through Santini. Tell the men on site to break it off, secure a defensive perimeter, and wait. Pick up their wounded, and any survivors from the first team that they can find. Let the Gens go." She shivered; not with cold or fear, but restrained rage. "I hate this. Even more than getting beat by Jack again… how I hate running from that little bitch."

-0-

"Okay, so where'd he go?" _Déjà vu_, the team leader thought. He and Warren met Bob and Wilson on the other side of the building.

His second shrugged. "Maybe he heard us coming, and bugged out." He glanced around. "Not many places to hide."

They were in an alley between three-story factory buildings. Either the structures were brand new or the contractor was a slob, because the alley was littered with construction debris. Bricks and short pieces of lumber lay scattered across the muddy ground, along with what looked like half a truckload of extra concrete that had been dumped on the ground to harden into an irregular four-foot mound. He briefly wondered how much the storm had contributed to the mess; there was plenty of broken window glass underfoot.

His headset clicked. "_Straying a bit off the path, aren't you, fellas?_" The voice was pitched low, almost a whisper; the little bastard was close by. As he clicked his mike, Bob set to work trying to locate the transmission.

He rested a foot on part of the concrete pile, and looked up at the rows of broken windows. "You can't hide forever, kid. Give it up. Nobody's gonna shoot you."

"_Wrong, no freaking way, and damn straight, in that order. You guys should aud while you still can. You're safe enough for now – you're welcome, by the way - but the girls are gonna find you sooner or later._"

He felt his brows knit together. "The fashion models in gray camo?"

"_Right in one. Wouldn't say that to their faces, though, if you get the chance. They came to this rumble with __issues__, man. They didn't like being drugged up and turned into peepshow performers. The little blonde wants to bury all of you. Alive._"

Bob raised five fingers, then waved his index finger in a tight circle. _Five meter radius. _The leader pointed to each man in turn, sending them into the closest buildings. "Kid, I don't know what you're talking about. I never heard of you guys before, and I sure as hell never turned one of your girls out."

The kid's voice lost its banter. "_You're not gonna play dumb with me, are you? I was there too. I saw what you did to her, dude. What you did to all of them. To be honest, I'm starting to wonder why I'm protecting you."_

The last of his three troopers disappeared inside the buildings. He was about to call for a radio check when a man-sized chunk of concrete erupted from the pile and sprang at him.


	9. Don't Start with Me, You Know How I Get

"Dixie, you're not trying to kill these men, are you?" Caitlin regarded her companion, who was bending over a limp IO trooper, holding his upper body out of the mud with a fistful of black vest. The helmet, its visor marred with a fist-sized hole, lolled loosely on the man's shoulders.

Dixie released her grip and let the body drop to the ground with a little splash. "Lez say, rather, I'm not goin out of my way _not_ to, sugar. I'll leave mercy to you moral-high-ground types." She straightened and blew on her bloody knuckles. "That it? Playtime over?"

_Play for you, maybe._ They'd continued in the direction the man they'd overtaken had been running, back into the industrial park, and shortly Dixie had said she heard another group of men one street over. She'd watched the little blonde pull three concussion grenades off her vest and arm them, then lob them almost straight up like mortar rounds, over the roof of a three-story building and down into the troops on the other side. Brick dust was still falling off the walls when the little hellcat had rounded the building at a dead run, with Kat close behind, and bowled over the nearest of the stunned men. The fight had lasted mere seconds, and the men had only gotten a couple of shots off before they were subdued.

"Let's find out." Caitlin clicked on her mike. "Team, by age, report."

"_We're at the north end of the complex._" Bobby sounded calm and almost relaxed. "_Took one team down. No casualties either side. Your sister's about to have a nicotine fit, though. She lost her cigs somewhere, and none of these guys smokes._"

She smiled. "Hold position, homeboy. I'll get back to you. Bruce Lee, where are you?"

"_Somewhat off the beaten path. Finishing my team up now._" A thud and a grunt."_You and Lady Jayne work your mad off?_"

"We're not taking anything out on these people, Bruce." _At least, I'm not._

"_Wasn't sure. That's why I led mine off first. I thought we might need someone in shape to talk, you know?_"

"No casualties, then?" She watched Dixie stripping the armor and weapons from the prone forms, searching them, and then binding their wrists and ankles with pieces of their own clothing. She noticed that her partner didn't bother removing the helmet of the man with the punched-out faceplate, or tying him up. She swallowed a lump in her throat.

"_Do broken bones count?_"

"Only if they don't heal."

"_No, then. Probably was a little rougher than I needed to be, but the team leader had the __cojones__ to pretend he didn't know what they'd done to us at the Project. Kind of pissed me off._"

"Uh, Bruce, the second group is all Black Razors, counter-terrorism guys. They might not even know what Gens are."

"_Oh. My bad._"

"Stay put, Bruce. I'll get back to you." She turned to Dixie. "That's four teams accounted for. But there were five choppers. A command chopper, do you think, or is there another team out there?"

Dixie was finally turning her attention to the man with the broken faceplate, and his odd rifle. She pulled the backpack off him as if she were undressing a mannequin and tumbled him back onto the wet ground facefirst. Then she looked over the weapon, which had knocked a smoking, basketball-sized hole in one of the concrete walls. "Dunno. I'm not the resident Razor expert round here. But I wun jiggle his elbow with a question right now." The little blonde tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then stepped towards Kat, wet a thumb and forefinger, and reached up to pinch a strand of Kat's hair. "Gonna need a trip to the hairdresser's, sugar. Cun you smell that?"

"Didn't know it was me."

They looked up at the sky. There was nothing to see of the contest in the sky above them, but the sounds of aerial combat were unmistakable: the burring noise of a chopper's rotors, and the occasional buzz of its cannon, set against the Dragon's almost inaudible whine and the high-pitched scream of its weapon, whatever it was. As they listened, the helicopter's engine sound changed, slowing and deepening until she could discern individual rotor beats as the sound faded to silence, and only the sound of the Dragon was left. _He's downed them all._

Dixie nodded towards the still figure with the strange rifle. "The last bunch we jumped had one man carryin a piece like that, but he never got a chance to fire it. You see another one, doan take any chances with him. I doan like the look of it."

"Kay." She listened to the faint hairdryer sound of the Dragon's engine; there was no other sound in the sky but the rushing wind. "Dragon One, do you read me?"

"_Loud and clear, Team Leader._"

"Any hostiles left to engage?"

"_Only on the ground. One team. It went down with the second chopper I dropped. They're a little slow off the mark, which could mean it's the field commander's bird and he was staying close to the chopper's C3 to manage his troops better. Or they may just be dealing with medical emergencies; they hit pretty hard._"

"Where are they?"

"_Almost directly north of the warehouse, maybe a klick from the fence, coming in dead slow. They must know they're all alone, but they're coming in anyway. Crazy bastards._" The admiration in his voice was clear.

"Okeydoke," she said absently, thinking. Was it strictly necessary to engage every team? Their grisly objective was already accomplished, and none of her team was hurt yet. "Showing IO we can strike at will and disappear might be more intimidating than taking down the fifth team. Dragon, pick us up in the parking lot at the east end of the complex. Team, proceed to rendezvous. Each of you acknowledge."

"_I'll keep watch on the perimeter until you're at the LZ. I can get there in about thirty seconds from anywhere in this box._" The sound of the Dragon's engines faded.

"_On the way._"Bobby's voice.

"_Me too._" Roxy. "_By the way, what kind of military jargon is 'okeydoke'?_"

"_Rolling, Red. You two better shake a leg. You're farthest away._"

The shortest route to the pickup point led them back through the ruined storage building. She passed the big cooler, and resisted the impulse to look in on Dr. Ivery. She resolutely avoided looking at the overturned wheelchair nearby.

"Pulse is strong an steady," Dixie said almost in her ear.

The bound men eyed them as they approached, most with apprehension on their faces. But one man, whose hands were bound behind him around a steel post, got awkwardly to his feet, sliding his back up the pole. "Forget something? Or did you change your mind about letting us live?"

"Just passing through." She stepped past, with Dixie following. "We leave the witness-elimination stuff to your sort."

"Bullshit," he called after her. "I know you. Seen your handiwork, rather."

"Doan pay no nevermind," Dixie said in a low voice. "He's jus' tryin to slow you down. We got a schedule to keep."

"Julius Gierling. You played him like a violin. How did it feel, when you tapped him the tenth time?"

She stopped, anger building, and turned. "He deserved everything he got, and more." She resumed her march.

"You're a cold bitch, Fairchild," the man called after her again, his voice rising. "_Stone_ cold."

She turned again, and Dixie planted a hand in her sternum. "_No._ Sugar, don't you see what he's doin? He's stallin you. If you miss rendezvous, Jock'll wait or come looking for you. What if IO's got another team on the way? Remember what I said about a flight a Tomcats? Coronado's just a spit away. Think of your people." She let herself be turned and prodded back into motion. She took half a dozen steps before she realized Dixie wasn't with her. She looked back. Dixie hadn't moved. The little blonde waved her off. "Go on. I got business here."

"Dixie, they're prisoners."

"Ain't gonna hurt em, carrot top. But I might get something useful out of em. I'll catch up or meet up later."

"Dixie. Come with me. Now."

"Sorry. I'm disinclined to follow that order. Guess we part ways here." She smiled. "Go on, sugar. Everthin be all right. Say hi to the towhead for me."

-0-

Once Kat had trotted out of earshot, Dixie slung her rifle and walked back to the loudmouthed Keeper. "You're a sassy one. Never met a Keeper with a sense a moral superiority before. What's your name, big boy?"

The man seemed suddenly to have lost his tongue. But he stood as straight as he could with his back against the pole, and stared down at her.

She flicked a glance skyward. "You know they dispatched the reaction team. They ain't got a prayer of catchin the others. But… who knows? They might bag me, if you stall me long enough."

He hesitated, then decided. "Adams. Jeff Adams."

"Heh. Like it. Perfect name for a clean-cut American boy. Or a microbeer. So, Jeff Adams. How do you know Jock's carrot top?"

For ten minutes, she listened without comment or question as the man described IO's pursuit of an eighteen-year-old Caitlin Fairchild across two states. She'd already heard Anna's version, and through her, Jock's and Kat's. Jeff's account fit nicely with them, as far as facts went, but his take seemed as twisted as the image in a funhouse mirror. Yet it was plausible, to someone who didn't know the girl, and the man's biometrics indicated absolute sincerity.

When he finished, she nodded. "Yeh. I see it. Gierling was in cahoots with Jock, all the way back when his kid was still in the Project, an Gierling helped bust em out… for a price, no doubt. You found out later that him and the girl had some history too, maybe even earlier. When he run across her in the desert, they sorta renewed their friendship in a hurry, an he made her an offer she cun refuse. But when Jock found out what he'd done, he give his ole buddy a bigger payoff than he asked for." She cocked her head. "Cept you think _she_ did it. Payin him back for usin her."

"You heard her. She'd have done it with a smile."

"Talk's cheap, but mebbe so." She stepped close enough to put a palm on the man's chest. "But know this. That girl wun capable of an unkind word before y'all shoplifted her away from her family, an tried to raise her in _your_ image. Everthin she knows bout deceit an callousness, she learned from you." She gave him a sudden push that forced him against the post. "Julius Gierling was a devil who enticed innocent girls into the Project with a pack a lies an empty promises. An if I was sure you knew what they done to her in that place, I'd kill you where you stand." She watched his eyes and felt his heart beating under her palm, and decided to let him live.

She stepped back. "Fact is, me an mine'd wipe out ever one a ya. But the kids got kind of a mellowin effect on us. And if we want em to join us, we gotta behave."

She glanced to the north. "Sure is takin em long enough to walk two klicks. Must be carryin their wounded." At his look of alarm, she smiled. "Oh. Din I tell ya? The reason they'll never catch the kids… is cuz the kids caught them first. Eighty percent a your relief force is eatin dirt right now. An the reason you doan hear the choppers no more _ain't_ cuz they landed." She adjusted the wrist straps of her fingerless gloves. "Bout ten of em left, including the chopper pilots. Doubt there's much fight left in em. The redhead claims she's letting em go to show IO we can engage an disengage at will. But I think she jus' plain felt sorry for em." She unslung her rifle and checked the gear on her web belt. "I don't. You boys ain't gonna have any excuse to tell each other later that we ran from you, no siree." She turned north. "An with the kids gone, I doan gotta be nice no more."

-0-

"_She's not answering the radio. There's nothing we can do, and we can't wait any longer._" Mr. Lynch's voice sounded a lot cooler than she felt. "_Don't worry, kids. She can take care of herself. __Board__._"

Gunfire sounded faintly from inside the industrial park: an explosion and a short burst of automatic fire. Kat traded looks with her sister, and they stepped close to Bobby. Eddie moved up behind, completing the corral. Bobby looked around at them. "Don't worry. I'm not going running back there. I can't tell where the shots are coming from. I'd never find her."

The water sheeting the asphalt flew up and away in a sudden hot wind. The Dragon whined fifty feet above, silhouetted against the churning clouds as it hovered, its tail ramp dropping.

She laid a gentle hand on Bobby's shoulder. "He's right. We'll see her again. Roxy, lift us up."

-0-

"Hear that?" The trooper grinned as the chopper's engines whined to life. "We don't have to wait for pickup after all, eh?"

When the order to stand down had come through, Team Alpha had only gotten as far as Team Charlie's downed helicopter, which, it turned out, they'd nearly come down on top of. The pilots had been tinkering with it since Team Charlie had disembarked, and now Team Alpha was encamped around it, waiting for further orders.

The team leader looked over the perimeter fence toward their original objective, almost due south. "Don't think pickup's what we're waiting for. I think it's reinforcements." The Specials' weird and deadly aircraft was visible to the southeast, slowing to a stop in midair. "But I don't think they're gonna get here in time. Our playmates are leaving." He didn't like admitting it, but he was glad to see them go. The Specials had taken down sixty of IO's best without working up a sweat, and he hadn't looked forward to going up against them with three effectives. His injured were lying on the ground near the chopper, as comfortable as the first aid kit could make them and still leave them in shape to travel.

Dunn shifted his grip on his Tesla rifle. "You really think all the others are gone?"

"Down or dead, I don't know, but out of the fight for sure." He cocked an eyebrow. "But, what the hell. That's why they pay us the big money."

The side of the chopper's engine housing erupted in a gout of fire and fragments. The Tesla rifleman screamed, looking down at his missing hand and the sputtering ruin of his rifle. The team leader shouted an unnecessary warning, hit the dirt, and drew his sidearm. All his men drew their weapons, even the ones too tranked to aim or run. His last man still in full working order reached for his wounded mate, probably thinking to drag him under the helicopter. A figure wearing gray camo appeared from nowhere and butt-stroked him. One of his men fired, stitching the side of the chopper where the intruder had just been.

All his men were firing now, but their attacker bounced from one place to another like a pinball between bumpers, impossibly fast, impossible to hit. And everywhere the apparition went, men went down. The team leader was the last. He'd just fired the last round in his clip when he felt his hand grasped and twisted, and gasped when he felt the radius bone in his forearm break. The ground came up to slam his cheek, and his ears rang. A strand of honey-colored hair fell in front of his eye. "Stay down, stormtrooper," A woman's voice said, deep and soft as a lover's. "Stay down an listen up. Dunno what you were waitin here for, but there wun no truce. There wun no cease-fire. The fight is over when _we_ say, not you." A hand pressed his face in the dirt. "I know there's more a you comin. I also know they're jus' mall security an ambulance drivers compared to you boys. Whaddaya think? Should I stick around and wait for em, give em a chance to catch me?"

"No," he squeezed out. "Don't."

The hand increased its pressure. "Why not?"

"Because you'd kill them all."

"Thass right. This is IO's Fort Zinderneuf an Little Big Horn rolled into one right here. Cept your chances weren't near as good. You still doan really know what you got sent against. This was just me an a few a Annie's kids on a lil adventure. We shoulda packed a lunch. The real strike team is still forming up out there somewheres, pickin a worthy target an makin plans. Self, I think wipin out that rat's nest in Boulder would be a good next move, but I doan make those decisions." She leaned closer. "But if we decide to do that, you an all your buddies won't even slow us down. I think we showed you _that_ today, din we? Tell every asshole wears this uniform, stormtrooper. Tell your bosses. We come for you, you might as well jus' lay on down an wait to die."

The hand lifted from his head. He rolled over. She was gone.


	10. Home

Escondido

Sarah descended the stairs from the roof, having finally put her storm to bed. She moved languidly, feeling the play of her leg muscles and the pressure of the stair treads against the soles of her feet. She felt serene, heavy-limbed, and lethargic, the way she felt after a long swim, or a lengthy soak in the hot tub, or very good sex. Building the storm had been something like each of those experiences, yet, in whole, like nothing she'd ever experienced. She'd sensed the complex forces at work so deeply it seemed as if she was a part of them; and, for a time, she had been. She'd been swept up in it all, ridden it, steered it; and when she'd cast the storm loose to spend itself, she'd felt an almost coital release.

She paused at the second-floor landing, deciding between a shower and a snack, then took the stairs. She smiled to herself. _Got the munchies. Next, I suppose, I'll be tossing Roxanne's room for a cigarette._

Her bubble popped when she saw the note on the little round table in the kitchen. She sat down, puzzling over it for a while, until she heard the soft chime that indicated someone using the keypad outside the back door. She got up and looked into the hall, and her heart leaped into her throat before she recognized the dirty, uniformed man pushing through the door. "_Bobby?_"

He gave her a weary smile. "Hi."

She hurried down the hall towards him. "What are you _wearing_?"

"The uniform of the Genactive Resistance," Eddie said importantly as he and Roxanne came through the door, similarly dressed. "Wear it proudly, for we are butt-kickers _supreme_. You must not've been in your room since we left. Anna laid out a set just like. Not our usual school threads, but we've had a learning experience, just the same."

As Bobby reached for her, Caitlin stepped through the door, and she got another surprise. "God in heaven, what _is_ that?"

Caitlin rested the butt of a huge rifle on her hip; the ammunition belt that fed it was wrapped around her arm, Rambo-style. "M-60 machine gun, seven-point-six-two millimeter. I never fired it, but lugging it around might have saved me bashing some heads. I'm sure quite a few guys ducked for cover when they saw me with it. They might not have known what Gens can do, but they understand firepower." The big redhead smiled down at her as she felt Bobby's arm circle her waist. "The ones who weren't still under cover from the storm, that is. You did half the job before we got there, Sarah."

"Yeah," Eddie chimed in. "A storm to make them scared to come out of their holes, just as ordered."

She noticed that Caitlin had closed the door behind her. "Where's Bobby's dad? And Anna? And who's Dixie?"

The group stilled. Caitlin said, "What do you know about Dixie?"

She led them to Anna's kitchen office and showed them the note.

...

_Darlings,_

_I wanted to greet you at home, but something has come up. I'll be back in two or three days, and I'll call before then. Eat out of the pantry and freezer until I'm home, and then I'll fix a victory banquet._

_Love you all._

_P.S. She probably won't offer anyway, but don't let Dixie cook. The woman couldn't boil water without setting the kitchen on fire, I swear._

_..._

"Dixie is another one of Anna's little disguises. Like that babe in the garden, only more so. _Much_ more so. You won't even be sure it's Anna _after_ you talk to her." Eddie smiled. "Think we'll ever see her again?" The look the boys exchanged made her feel a ridiculous little twinge of jealousy, until Bobby's grip on her tightened. She inhaled, smelling mesquite smoke under the odor of damp cloth, and regained her composure.

"If not, we'll be seeing another stranger with Anna's dimples someday, is my guess. Bro, you hit the shower first. I'll wait."

Caitlin glanced at Roxanne. "Ditto."

"The shower's plenty big for two, Sis."

"Not when one of them is me. Besides, I'm not letting go of this thing before I put it away." She glanced at Bobby and her. "I won't be long." She turned for the back stairwell.

Eddie gave Roxy a crooked smile. "If you're feeling all… wound up from our brush with death, we could free up one of the showers."

"As if. You just came through a fight with a hundred guys without a scratch. You really want to end the day by getting beat to death by my sister?"

He shrugged, still smiling. "Had to ask. You might wonder if I'm okay." They headed for the front stairs.

Kat rejoined Bobby and her still in the nook a few minutes later, as Bobby finished a more detailed description of Anna's alter ego, "Dixie". While Kat fired up the coffeemaker, she said, "Guess you were right about that, Sis. The 'Anna' we know is just a role. The lead role, but still…"

Bobby flicked a glance toward the door, and Sarah realized Caitlin's use of 'Sis' had him looking for Roxanne. _Going to have to tell everyone soon, starting with Roxanne. _"I was wrong where it counted, Caitlin. Everybody plays roles, roles that change with your company or your circumstances. Different as this 'Dixie' may seem, I'll bet she'd never do anything to harm us."

"No," Bobby said. "But she wouldn't be easy to live with. Are you sure she's going to change back?"

"Dixie told me that the 'Anna' we… Oh, hell. The Anna we love. She's the default setting, and we can count on her coming back when 'Dixie's' job is done." Caitlin looked deeply troubled. "But I'm not entirely sure what her mission is, or how long it'll really last."

Bobby leaned forward. "So, why did she stay behind?"

"She hinted that changing back and forth would take time. That's why she kept to herself yesterday. Now that we'd know what she's up to, I bet she wouldn't want to do it around us. To keep up the pretense. Now I know why I couldn't find her duffel on the plane." Kat poured coffee into three mugs and prepared them: black for Bobby, sugar for herself, a touch of cream and sugar for her. Sarah noted without comment that the big redhead had chosen John Lynch's favorite mug.

Kat brought the mugs, served them, and sat, then picked up the note. "She planned it this way from the beginning, obviously. I suppose, after we split up, she played Genactive terrorist for every IO witness she could find. I have hopes she didn't kill anybody."

Bobby laid his hand over Kat's. "So what do we need to do?"

"Play along. She's gone to great lengths to compartmentalize this alter ego of hers. When she calls, we'll tell her Dixie stayed behind, and she'll act surprised. When she comes home, she'll have a plausible excuse for three days' absence, which we should pretend to believe. And if we ever talk about Dixie in Anna's hearing, we'll act as if she's what Dixie claimed she is: an old friend and associate of Anna's, a rogue Gen, part of a group opposed to IO that's trying to recruit us."

Eddie entered the kitchen, headed for the coffeemaker, and poured the last of the brew into a mug.

Sarah smiled. "That was quick. I can't even get my makeup off that fast. Are you sure you got behind your ears?"

He turned, leaned against the counter, and took a sip. "If I missed a spot, it wasn't there. Wanna do an inspection, Princess?"

"I'll leave that to Roxanne. And why are you guys all calling me 'Princess'?"

He sipped again. "It's what 'Sarah' means, in Hebrew. And Rox and I been calling you that almost since we met you, just not to your face."

To cover her momentary fluster, she said, "Where is she, by the way? Not out of the shower yet?"

"Water was still running when I came down. I don't expect to see her downstairs for an hour. She's sending some nightmares down the drain, I think." He sipped again. "Had fun, but it sure is nice to be home."

"Why?" The sharpness of Kat's voice startled them all.

Eddie shifted slightly. "You know. Something familiar."

"'Familiar.' We've barely been in this house a week. Before that, we didn't know it existed. We _sure_ didn't know we'd be moving in with just the clothes on our backs. Bet you're wearing that shirt for the first time ever." She bunched up a fistful of her vest. "Speaking of which. Until today, a Girl Scout uniform was the only one I ever wore, unless you count my swimsuit for water polo. I don't even shoot air rifles at carnivals. Ten minutes ago, I racked a machine gun in the basement that would put holes in a block wall."

She looked around the kitchen. "Ever since we ran away from the Project, Anna's been our anchor, even more than Mr. Lynch. Now she's gone, with no guarantee she's coming back, or that she'll be the same if she does. That leaves us with Bobby's dad, a professional killer toying with insanity."

"Kat!"

"It's true, Bobby. Every time he uses his Gen. And the effect's cumulative. Ask him how many of the Twelves are still alive and have all their marbles."

"My father's not crazy, Kat. He's the sanest guy I ever met."

"Yet you don't trust him."

"I just put my life in his hands."

"But do you believe him? When he says he never quit looking for you? When he blames himself for your mother's death, don't you still curl your lip a little?"

"No." His hand squeezed Kat's. "I'm still not comfortable around him, but I believe him. He's a good man, and he's trying to be a good father. Any strain between us is my problem, not his."

"There," Eddie said. "Now, _that's_ what I'm talking about." When they turned to him, he went on. "Kat blowing off steam over something dumb that's been bothering her, so she can get back to being cool and responsible. You three playing grownup whenever the Mr. and Mrs. are out of the house. Familiar, as in 'family'. Home isn't a place we moved into, Red. It's something we brought with us." He set his mug on the counter and massaged Kat's shoulders. "Gotta relax a little, Miss Meticulous. The universe is unfolding as it should, all of that. It doesn't belong on these shoulders." He bent low. "Let it go, Team Leader. Be a girl for a while."

Kat looked across the table at her, a faint smile touching her lips. "Okay, Eddie. Point taken. Thanks for the advice and the shoulder rub. Now you know I wore the leotard. You can stop trying to look down my shirt now."

-0-

"Thanks for the lift, Jock. But I hope yer not plannin to take too long gettin home. The towhead ain't there, an yer kids need you." She grinned. "Leastways, I think thass the way it works."

They walked out the door of the old semi garage nestled among the wooded ridges a few miles east of town. It didn't look big enough for a plane of any size, but the back wall of the original structure had been dug into the steep hillside, and Lynch had had the excavation extended until most of the interior was underground. He was still in his black travel clothes, but she was wearing Anna's, with the jacket unzipped and its hood thrown back. She'd unbound her hair, and it spilled loose over the upper half of her body. Looking at her made him ache for his wife. "I can drop you at a hotel, and you can call for a pickup later, if you want. After you've… concluded your business."

"Oh, you'll get a phone call, aright. But it won't be me yer pickin up. Change back is started arready. Doan forget the bag in the back." She carried a small pack hardly bigger than a purse; the duffel was in the rental's trunk. He briefly imagined the Hertz people finding it and examining its contents.

He led her to his car. "You know, I've traveled through the South. But I can't place your accent."

"Didn't stay in one place long when I was a kid. My accent's what a linguistics expert would call 'muddy,' meanin it's a hodgepodge of Southern dialects, an he cain't tell where I come from by listenin to it."

He offered her a small smile. "Of course."

"A course."

On the drive to the motel, she said, "Ya know, the boys at IO won't stay convinced, if this is the only run-in they have with the Resistance. Gonna have to stage some more appearances by Twelve-fives if you wanna keep em chasin that wild goose."

Lynch pulled the car in front of the motel office. "I know. I also know that if we stage enough of them, it won't be a bluff any more. It really will be a war."

She gave him an odd smile. "If it looks like a duck…"

"So, you think we'll meet again?"

"Prolly not. Gotta give Ivana some variety." She turned to him. "Check in with me?"

"What?"

She shook her head. "Doan get yer shorts in a bunch, Jock. A man an a woman's jus' less suspicious than a woman alone, is all."

She came into the office with him, and rested a hand on his forearm as he filled out the paperwork. He watched the clerk glance back and forth, from the tall man with the eyepatch to the possible jailbait at his side. "Doan even think it, stud," she said to the clerk, her voice low and very mature. "We been married fifteen years."

Lynch chuckled. "And you look just like you did when I married you. You should be used to the stares by now."

She smiled. "Clean livin, exercise, an Botox."

He drove her to her unit. As he brought the car to a stop at the door, she turned to him and tilted her head slightly towards the still-visible office window. "If yer not comin in, ya better gimme a kiss, at least."

He leaned forward to brush his lips against hers, only to find her arms around his neck and a small hand at the back of his head, making withdrawal impossible. She looked into his eyes. "I cun figure what she saw in you, at first. Now I unnerstand why she does it all. G'bye, John Lynch." She bussed him gently but thoroughly, then opened her door, reaching behind the seat for her bag. "'Spect her to call tomorrow night. Say bye to the kids for me." She unlocked the unit's door swiftly, slipped inside, and shut it.

He sat, unmoving, for a few minutes, watching the unit's closed curtain, before he put the car in gear and drove away.

8


	11. Changed Circumstances

Chula Vista

"We're on site, ma'am, and things could be worse." The Security agent spoke into his phone as he watched his people releasing the bound men. "Looks like casualties are much lighter than we were expecting, and mostly among the Razors. We found Dr. Ivery, and he's fine."

"_What about Colby? Did he leave with the Specials_?"

A Medical team arrived; he waved them urgently towards the overturned wheelchair. "No, ma'am. He's here with us. But I don't know for how long. He's hurt bad."

"_Shot_?"

"No. At least, I don't think so." He watched the medics cut the Assistant Director's bonds and ease him onto a stretcher with the exaggerated care they usually reserved for people beyond their help. "They tied him up in a chair and beat him within an inch of his life, and maybe a little more." He shook his head, even though he knew she couldn't see. "Never seen anything like it. He looks like he drove his car off a cliff."

He lifted his eyes to the curdled sky. The weird storm surrounding the site had dissipated, but there was still plenty of rain overhead, ready to fall at any moment. But he was more worried about witnesses than rain. He could see the twinkle of police lights at the entrance to the complex, but he knew the cops couldn't hold a perimeter this big; curious eyes were probably watching the goings-on right now. "The Razors are already out of here and on their way to debrief, and the SS are right behind, but we've got a parade of ambulances going out the front gate, and we're leaving behind five crashed assault helicopters."

"_Leave that to me. Where's Ivery_?"

"Helping tend the wounded, ma'am."

"_Get him to the phone_."

*

Dr. Benjamin Ivery ran a trembling hand over his bald head, returned his borrowed stethoscope, and took the proffered phone. "Ivana?"

"_Ben, are you all right_?"

He couldn't help smiling briefly at the uncharacteristic concern. "I'm whole and undamaged, but I had a few tense moments. You heard about Frank?"

"_Yes. How bad is it, really_?"

"Bad enough I was afraid to move him without a team and an ambulance waiting. Multiple broken bones and internal injuries, for a start. She worked him over pretty good."

"'_She'? The chameleon_?"

"No. another one." He lowered his voice. "Ivana, she had your face too. but she wasn't the same one, I'm certain of it. And there are more of them."

"_So he was telling the truth_."

"Beginning to end, I think. We blew his cover in the restaurant, and that's the real reason they came here in such force. To hand us our heads and set us back on our heels, certainly, but mainly to pay back Frank for abusing their confidence. He must have been very close." Driven to imprudence by conscience, he added, "We treated him pretty shabbily, Ivana."

"_Whatever mistakes we made, they're done_," she said dismissively. "_I promised I'd make it up to him if his story was true, and I will. I'll just have to up the reward. Considerably_."

"If he lives."

"_If he lives_."

Thursday April 6 2006  
San Diego

When the door chime at the front of her shop sounded, Elise struggled to rouse herself from behind the sales counter, even though visitors were rare lately. Almost everyone entering her store since last Friday had been a cop or a gawper who barely stuck her head in before she was gone. Elise hadn't made a sale in two days, and her rent was due in nine. Another week like this, and Estrellita's was done.

The two who entered weren't cops, but they weren't good prospects either. In fact, they looked like models for her competitors come to check out her goods. They were younger than her usual clientele, likely looking for trendy Aeropostale and CK rags rather than the mostly conservative imports on Estrellita's racks.

The two separated and stepped among the racks. Sure enough, the little brunette with the purple hair frosting spread a top across the rack, looked at it, and frowned; the dark one with the long black hair didn't even pull out the item she was examining, just glanced at the tag and let go of it like it was dirty.

Elise approached the dye job. "Can I help you?"

The girl put the top back in the rack and looked at Elise with gorgeous violet eyes. "Just looking around." Then she added, "Everything in here seems so, I don't know…"

"Old-fashioned?"

The girl nodded. "Sorry."

"Don't be. The proper term is 'classic.'" She pulled the top back out. "Feel the material."

The girl rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. "Heavier than it looks, but not stiff. Soft." She looked at it again. "Bet it'd be comfortable, anyway."

"Look at the stitching. It's probably the strongest part of the garment. If you know how to take care of clothes, this will still fit perfectly and look new after years of use." Elise put it back in the rack. "Which is why the styles are conservative. You pay a premium for this level of quality. This is no store for someone who empties her closets twice a year to stay in fashion."

The little dye job looked thoughtful. "But it might be a good place to shop if you wanted to look older sometimes, but still hot." She flashed a smile, and Elise smiled back, feeling better than she had since Frank Colby's visit. "Think I'll just look around some more." She glanced at the other girl. "Don't mind Sarah. She's not even looking at your stuff. She's just checking the tags, I bet. She's got this mental list of about fifty countries she doesn't buy stuff from. You know: this country's burning its rainforest to plant crops for export, that country exploits its workers, another one still allows product testing on animals, yada yada."

"I see." Elise approached the dark girl, Sarah. "Having trouble finding something you like?"

"No, but I'm having trouble finding something I can wear with a clear conscience." She pulled a satiny blouse out partway. "Do you _know_ where this comes from, and what the working conditions are like?"

Elise examined the "Product of" tag, and the tiny monogram in its corner. She nodded. "This one comes from Atena."

Sarah's brows gathered. "Atena? What-"

"Atena Moreno, a twenty-six-year old widow with two boys just old enough for school. Her husband was killed on a bus, can you believe it?" She pulled the garment out, spread it across the rack, and smoothed it out. "She puts in a forty-hour week most of the year, except for a month in spring and fall, when she works Saturdays too. She'll never get rich on her wages, but she can afford decent food and clothes for her kids, and an apartment in a good neighborhood a short walk from where she works, and she can put a little money by if she's careful. She works in a garment makers' shop where the fabrics are a pleasure to work with and quality matters and her opinions are listened to. The manager is also the owner, and he's a decent sort who treats the girls like friends. He's _very_ glad to be selling to a _norteamericana_ who doesn't demand another price cut with every order; buyers for the big-box stores won't even look at his stuff."

She returned the garment to the rack. "If his buyers dry up or he fails for some other reason, Atena will end up working for half the pay in a shop clear across town, in a neighborhood she'd be afraid to move to. Between the twelve-hour days she'll be putting in and the two-hour commute, her boys will be growing up without her. And those twelve-hour days will be six and seven days every week, working in a sweatshop where the material starts falling apart as soon as it's cut, and the manager is looking over her shoulder every minute, demanding that she put fewer stitches in so she can sew more shirts every hour. And on Saturday, if she wants to have a job on Monday, she'll take his laundry home to wash, or let him bend her over his desk at lunch."

Elise turned to Sarah, and met the dark girl's eyes squarely. "Boycotts sound like a perfect way to stop people from behaving irresponsibly for profit, but unless they have the force of law, they always fail. Someone's always willing to buy the goods anyway. The exploiters still profit. If demand dips, it just means even more desperate times for Atena and those like her. I know what I'm doing is no grand solution. It's more like working in a soup kitchen. But, for a couple dozen people at least, it's _working_."

"Better to light one candle than stage a protest in the dark, eh?" Sarah turned the rack, searching, and picked out a light blue half-sleeved shirt. "I'll take this one."

Elise eyed the selection. "This isn't your size." _Or your style._

"It's a gift."

The little dye job joined them with several outfits over her arm. "Found a couple things. There's some good stuff in your makeup display, too."

Sarah smiled. "Roxanne, I swear. You need an intervention or something."

At the sales counter, both girls dug into their purses and offered credit cards. Elise raised her eyebrows. _Fashion models, for sure. No one their age could make enough money to qualify for Visa Blacks otherwise. _But when she took them into her hand and saw that the cards bore no printing, signature pad, or Visa logo, the truth hit her: these weren't the status-appeal cards Visa issued in imitation of Black Cards; these were the real deal. Cautiously she said, "Are you sure these will go through?"

"They always do," Sarah said.

The cards processed without a hitch. Elise was careful to handle them separately; with no identifying features, it would be easy to mix them up. _Don't suppose you see two of them on a counter at the same time very often. They must be heiresses out buddy-shopping in the slums._

Elise saw them to the door. When they left, she breathed a sigh of relief; not because they were gone, but because her light bill was covered for the month, assuming she still had a shop thirty days from now. She turned and looked into her place, at the neat carousels of clothing and the displays of accessories on the walls. _It's no Neiman-Marcus, but it's a beautiful little shop. And it's my life now._

The door chimed at the same time she heard a deep male voice behind her. "Elise?"

She turned, and a gargoyle stared down at her. She gasped and took a step back.

"Sorry," the horribly scarred man with the eyepatch said. "Didn't mean to startle you."

She regained her composure. "My mind was somewhere else. Can I help you?"

He offered a hand. "I'm Jack."

She was too shocked to take it. "_Annie's_ Jack?"

He raised an eyebrow. "She didn't describe me, I take it."

She pulled her eyes from the disfigurements and studied the rest. The right side of his face was rather handsome, and looked like it belonged to a man no older than forty or so. Under the light slacks and shirt, muscles rolled when he moved, and his body didn't look like it carried an ounce of fat. The cops had been intimidating enough, but this man looked like somebody who gave cops restless nights. "She did, but she didn't mention…"

"The scars. Odd. You'd think it'd be the first thing, wouldn't you?"

Elise felt a thrill of fear, despite the man's mild demeanor. This man was no stranger to violence. If Annie had displeased him in any way… "Is she okay?"

He nodded. "Out of town for a while. But I imagine she'll be back in your shop before long." He passed into the store, and she followed.

"If this is about the money she spent-"

"Hardly. What she bought was worth every penny, and more." Among the racks now, and mostly out of sight of the corridor, he turned to her. "One reason I'm here is to thank you. Not just for your help getting her away. For what you did before." His voice turned soft, the gravel in it changing to velvet. "I've known her for years, and she never showed any interest in clothes, or vanities of any kind. She used to have six identical outfits in her closet. The girls gave up trying to clothes shop with her a long time ago. Now she'll change outfits three times in a day, and she looks beautiful in every one of them. You did that for her."

She watched him touch a dress, just running the tips of his fingers lightly down the fabric, and she was certain he was imagining a woman in it. "This is good work. Not just the craftsmanship. The designers know what they're doing too." He turned his eye to her. "Why set up business here? A shop like this belongs at The Colonnades."

She scoffed. "I can barely afford the rents here."

"And I suppose you're paying down a business loan."

_No. I couldn't get a business loan. I had to take out a second mortgage. _Uneasily, she asked, "Is there a reason you're asking, Mr.… I didn't get your last name."

He offered his hand again. "Lynch. John Lynch, Jack to my friends. And any friend of hers is one of mine. Seriously."

She took his hand; rather, she placed hers in his and let it be swallowed up. She imagined those hands on little Annie, and swallowed. "Elise Brickner."

He gripped her briefly and let go. "So you took back your maiden name."

The little hairs on the back of her neck rose. "You've been checking me out?"

"No more than I would any prospective business venture." His gaze intensified. "She told you I've got money."

"Yes. But she didn't say how much, or where it comes from."

"Well." He looked out the door. "You've met all my girls now. Did they flash their Black Cards?" At her look, he nodded. "Seemed an easy way to prove my bona fides. Elise, what would it take to get you free of the bank and operating on a cash basis? I'm talking overhead, purchases, advertising budget, living expenses, everything."

She'd never thought of her business liabilities in those terms. She'd just taken out her loan for as much as she thought she could afford to service, and adjusted her business model to fit. She shrugged. "Hundred, hundred fifty thousand."

"Meaning three hundred. New startups always under-capitalize, it's why half of them fail. And you'll need a cash cushion while you build your clientele. In The Colonnades." He leaned over her. "I can have that in your account by close of business today, if you want it."

She found her voice. "Are we talking a loan, or a partnership?"

"No loans. A partnership, but a silent one." He smiled. "Well, mostly silent. I really think you should move." He looked out the door at the mostly empty corridor. "But if you think staying here's a better idea…"

"I… I'm not sure I want a partner, Jack."

"Then buy me out with the profits, which I expect will be substantial once you can spend with a free hand and you're not hag-ridden by the bank." He leaned back. "I know this is sudden, and I'm pressing hard. But, you know, once your wealth accumulates past a certain point, you don't think about _buying_ stuff with it as much as _doing_ stuff with it. Buy me out or allocate me a portion of the profits, I don't care which. But you're not going under for lack of operating capital if I have anything to say about it."

"_Why?_"

"You were a friend to her, and she doesn't have many. Not her fault; she loves people and she's friendly as a puppy. She's just had damn few opportunities. If she were in a position to ask my help for you, she would. It's that simple, Elise." He watched her silently, plainly waiting for an answer.

"Can I have a little time to think it over?"

"The offer stands indefinitely, but I don't know when we'll see each other again. I'm a hard man to get hold of." He went on, gently, "Take the money now, and wait three days, if you want. Maybe business here will pick up."

"No." She was filled with sudden decision. "I'll do it. Just draw up the papers."

He extended his hand a third time. "This is our only contract, Elise."

A moment later, he said, "At the risk of breaking our agreement already, what do you think of the idea of a plus-size line?"

She shook her head. "There's money in it, but it's hard to build a clientele. Large sizes are expensive anyway, and when you add on what I'd charge, not many women would be willing to pay."

"Well, then. How about custom orders? Will your people do that?"

"It wouldn't be profitable."

"I'm not talking about profit, actually." His scarred face softened again. "I'm talking about a beautiful girl who feels like a circus freak because she has such a hard time finding decent clothes."

Realization struck. "Kat."

"It wouldn't be safe to bring her in here for a fitting, but I'm sure I can get her sizes. See what you can do for her, will you?" He turned to leave, then turned back. "One more thing."

She smiled despite herself. "What, silent partner?"

"Your married name was Taylor."

She swallowed. "Yes."

"Your ex is up for his third parole hearing soon. You're going to be very busy for the next several weeks. You really can't afford the distraction of a court appearance."

"I have to go. The man haunts my dreams. If I don't show, they're almost sure to let him out on parole. And he said-"

"Precisely my point." His hand reached out and gripped hers, and she realized she'd been holding her stomach, the way she had that awful day, to keep her intestines from spilling out as she ran for her life. "Listen to me and believe, Elise. If he makes parole, you've already seen and heard the last of him." He turned to leave. "I think we're all due for some peace in our lives."

Saturday April 8 2006  
Escondido

Anna knew it was too early to be looking for a message from Frank. She'd learned of the shocking extent of his injuries from Dixie, and she imagined he was still under sedation and unable to speak, much less sneak a personal ad into the San Diego _Union-Tribune_. But ever since Jack had revealed Frank's method of contacting him, she'd been resisting the urge to check.

She finally gave in, and called up the paper's Personals. She didn't find a message from Jack's friend. What she did find set her hands trembling as they hovered over the keys.

**Sister, we're so sorry we parted that night. We'll never stop looking for you. If you are reading this, know that we love and miss you. Contact us.**

Following this were two very long strings of numbers, all ones and zeroes interrupted by dashes. She converted them from binary to base ten as automatically as another person would read a line of print.

**01-15-1990  
****970-503-6160**

The second number was a phone number in western Colorado, judging by the area code. Which could connect to anywhere, she supposed. The first, according to Jack, was the date of the attack on the power plant, when the cybers mysteriously appeared on IO's task force and then disappeared forever.

Her hands steadied as she reached for her cell phone.


End file.
